LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.^... Copyright No.„_._„_ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A SERIES OF NARRATIVES, DIALOGUES, BIOGRAPHIES, AND TALES, 
FOR THE INSTRUCTION AND ENTERTAINMENT 
OF THE YOUNG. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred 

and fift j-four, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 



, /)/? 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred 

and fifty-six, by 

HAEPEE & BROTHERS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 



TO THE READERS. 

When traveling in Europe last summer, I often wished that I 
could have the eyes of the readers of the Story-books with me to 
witness some of the strange and curious scenes through which I 
was daily passing, and at length, in Switzerland, I resolved to 
write an exact account of what I saw in rambling a fortnight 
among the Alps, and to make a Story-book of the narrative. 
Whether you will find the account interesting or not, I do not 
know ; but there is one thing that you may rely upon, and that 
is its truth. Every thing that the book contains is an exact 
transcript of what actually occurred, even to the words that are 
spoken ; and every part of the journal was written at the time of 
the date of it, so that the statements which the book contains are 
in every respect truthfal and exact. 

The object of the book is not to describe extraordinary or won- 
derful adventures, but only to give as faithful and exact a picture 
as possible of the every-day scenes presented to the view of the 
traveler in rambling among the Alps. 



CONTENTS. 





LETTER PAGE 

I. THE LITTLE SAVOYARDS AND THEIR GOATS 13 

II. UP TO CHAMOUNY 26 

III. MONT BLANC 42 

IV. THE GLACIERS 56 

V. THE SEA OF ICE 64 

VI. OLD BLACK HEAD 85 

VII. THE GREAT ST. BERNARD 110 

VIII. THE EXCURSION 121 

IX. THE BATHS OF LEUK 133 

X. THE PASS OF THE GEMMI . 145 



ENGRAVINGS. 



PAGE 

interlachen Frontispiece. 

DISEMBARRASSING THE GOAT 23 

THE CHAR A BANC 29 

BATHS OF ST. GERVAIS 33 

VIEWING THE ASCENSION 51 

RIVER ISSUING FROM A GLACIER 62 

MONTANVERT 73 

COMING DOWN 80 

THE GALLERY OF THE TETE NOIRE 94 

HOSPICE OF THE GREAT ST. BERNARD 115 

VIEW THROUGH THE GLASS 139 

THE BATHERS AT LEUK 144 

HOLDING BACK 153 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS, 



LETTER L 

THE LITTLE SAVOYARDS AND THEIR GOATS. 
Description of Cluses. The lofty mountains bordering it. The river. 

Cluses, Savoy, Saturday, Aug. li. 

T AM sitting at the window of an inn at a small village in Savoy, 
among the Alps. Imagine a vast plain, eight or ten miles in 
extent, perfectly level and extremely fertile, and all laid out in 
fields, gardens, orchards, and meadows, forming the richest and 
most beautiful scene that can be conceived. This plain is the 
bottom of a valley. It is surrounded and closely hemmed in on 
every side with precipitous mountains, the summits of which reach 
above the clouds. 

There are no fences or any inclosures of any kind on the plain, 
and pretty paths and roads lead over it in every direction, along 
the margin of the fields and gardens, and under the shade of the 
trees. There is a torrent of a river, however, flowing through the 
^ centre of it, over a very broad, pebbly bed ; but there are bridges 
across the river here and there, by which we can pass easily from 
side to side. Indeed, a boy might wade across it any where, only 
I presume he would find it extremely cold ; for the water of this 
river, a few miles farther up the valley, comes out from under the 



14 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



The slopes of the mountains. Lofty precipices. The zigzag paths leading up. 

ice of an immense glacier, five hundred feet high. The name of 
this river is the Arve. 

In rambling over this plain by the roads and paths I have spo- 
ken of, you see the immense mountains rising in full view all 
around you, and you can survey the slopes of them from the top 
to the bottom. In some places they form precipices of naked rock ; 
in others, the craggy slope recedes a little, and small tufts of shrub- 
bery and grass grow in the angles and interstices, like moss in the 
crevices of an old wall. Farther up, there are slopes that are 
feathered with forests of fir-trees, with furrows cut through them 
at intervals by the avalanches, which slide down from above in 
the winter and spring ; and here and there, above and beyond these, 
away up in the sky, you can sometimes see, with a glass, a broad 
extent of green and cultivated fields or pasturages, with hamlets 
or scattered houses, and sometimes even the spire of a church 
among them. The people there seem literally to live in the sky. 

On every side of the valley zigzag paths have been cut in the 
mountains, by means of which the peasants can go up and come 
down. These paths were made — most of them — a thousand years 
ago, and have been traveled by all the generations of peasants 
that have inhabited these mountains since that time. The paths 
are broad, but very steep. They are roughly paved with large 
and irregular stones ; they go by a zigzag course up the mount- 
ain-side. In some places the space for them has been cut out of 
the solid rock ; in other places it has been widened by laying down 
the trunks of tall trees on the outer edge of them, where there was 
a gap or a chasm to be spanned. It is hard work going up these 



A K AMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



15 



The pleasure of ascending the zigzags. Our opera-glass. The surprise of the children. 

zigzag paths unless you go very slowly ; for, notwithstanding the 
zigzag course that they run, they are very steep. But it is pleas- 
ant ascending them, on account of your having at every turn so 
grand a view of the valley, and of the mountains around it. You 
look down upon the fields, and gardens, and orchards, and pretty 
farm-houses that fill the valley, just as if you were in a balloon ; 
and with your glass you look across to some other zigzag paths 
on the face of the opposite mountain, where you perhaps see a man 
coming leading a horse, or a group of children, or a woman with 
some burden — such, for instance, as a great bundle of hay — poised 
on her head ! 

The glass that we use for this purpose is a large opera-glass of 
great power. We amuse ourselves when we sit down to rest by 
calling the little Savoyard children that we see going by to come 
to us, and then letting them look through it. It is amusing to see 
them laugh at each other, at the awkward attempts they make at 
first in putting the instrument to their eyes — first shutting up one 
eye and then the other, and making queer faces, when they ought 
to keep both eyes open, and make no faces at all — and then to lis- 
ten to their exclamations of surprise at seeing distant objects 
brought so near to them, and made to look so bright and plain. 

"Ah! look," they say, "look! look! Only see the mountain 
brought up so close to the side of me." 

At the upper end of the valley the mountains seem to close en- 
tirely across it. There is, however, a narrow chasm where the 
River Arve comes in. This chasm is bordered on each side by stu- 
pendous mountains five or six thousand feet high, with precipices 



16 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



Vast chasm. Situation of the village. Diligences going up the valley. 

almost perpendicular rising from the banks of the river at the base 
of them. This chasm seems to have been originally only just 
wide enough for the stream, but as the only way of getting in 
among the mountains beyond lies through it, men have contrived 
to get room for a road along the bank. 

The village is built just at the entrance of this gorge, and the 
inn, being almost the last house in the village, seems to stand in 
the very jaws of it. At night, when I come to the window and 
look out up the chasm, and gaze up to the crests of the precipices 
towering above it, there is something extremely solemn and almost 
fearful in the awful grandeur of the spectacle. 

We have not been through this gorge yet, and I have only an 
imperfect idea what we shall find there. We are going up to-day, 
and I shall, perhaps, in my next letter, describe what I see. I 
know that there is very sublime and beautiful scenery there, in 
among the mountains, for the road is a great thoroughfare for trav- 
elers visiting the Alps. Three or four diligences loaded with pas- 
sengers go by the windows of our inn, each way, every day, in and 
out of the gorge, and there are a great number of other vehicles 
besides. We are going in a carriage of the country called a char 
a banc. We are to set out at three o'clock, and it is now eleven. 
In the mean time, I have taken my pen to give- you an account of 
the little Savoyards whom I saw the other night on the mountain 
side, and of the goats which they were tending there. 

This valley is in a country called Savoy, and the people who 
live in Savoy are called Savoyards, so that by the little Savoy- 
ards I mean the children of Savoy. 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



17 



Savoy. An evening walk. Sounds on the -mountains. 

I was walking two or three evenings since in a pleasant little 
road which led along by the margin of the valley, just at the foot 
of the mountains. After we had passed by the village and the 
little gardens that were on the borders of it, we sat down upon 
some smooth logs that lay by the road-side, and began to look 
out upon the valley. Of course, the side of the mountain was be- 
hind us. 

It was a very calm and still evening, and we could hear various 
distant sounds coming to us from far down the valley, such as the 
tinkling of bells, the barking of dogs, and the voices of men. 
Presently we thought we heard voices behind us, like those of 
children, and we turned round to see where the sounds came from. 

" Can it be possible," said Mar, my companion, " that there can 
be children up upon those rocks ?" 

We listened, and we could distinctly hear the voice of a boy far 
up the mountain side, singing, and in another direction two other 
voices, as of children talking and laughing together. 

" They certainly are children," added my companion. " Where 
can they be ?" 

We accordingly changed our places on the log so as to face the 
mountain. The whole side of it, for a mile each way, and five' 
thousand feet high, was in full view before us, and it seemed al- 
most a perpendicular precipice of rocks, with tufts of trees and 
small patches of grass growing here and there in nooks and inter- 
stices. We could hear the children now more distinctly than 
ever, and we began to examine the mountain side with the glass, 
to see if we could find them. 

20 B 



18 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



We explore the mountain side with the glass. The goats. Children following them. 

"Do you see any thing?" said I to my companion, who helcl 
the glass. 

"I can not see the children," said she, "but I see something 
moving up there along the face of the precipice, among some tufts 
of grass and bushes. It is a goat. Yes, it is a goat, and there is 
another, and another. There are several of them, walking along 
one after another." 

By looking very attentively in the direction which she indica- 
ted, I could now see the goats myself with the naked eye. They 
looked like little white specks slowly moving along the face of the 
mountain at a vast height above us. 

"Is it possible," said she, " that the goats can climb up to such 
places as those ?" 

I then took the glass, and began to look at the goats. They 
were walking along, one behind the other, some of them apparently 
on the brink of precipices a thousand feet down. When they 
came to any grass or shrubbery, they would stop to browze a mo- 
ment, and then walk on as unconcernedly and as much at their 
ease as if they had been walking along a wide road on level ground. 

I continued to explore the rocks and tufts of bushes on that 
part of the mountain, and presently I caught sight of the two 
boys. They were following the goats along from rock to rock, 
and from shelf to shelf, to drive them down the mountain. It 
seemed impossible that boys could come down so steep a declivity. 
They appeared, however, perfectly at their ease, and called to one 
another, and sang, and shouted, like boys in America driving home 
the cows from a green and gently sloping pasture. 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



19 



Boys calling to each other. Goat in difficulty. 

There was one boy apart from these two, singing all by himself, 
from mere gladness and joyousness of heart. He seemed to be 
seated on some shelving rock, for we could only see his head 
through a little clump of bushes, and he remained motionless in 
the same place a long time. He was a great way off from us, so 
that we could only see him through the glass ; but so calm and 
still was the evening air, that we could hear his song as distinctly 
as you can hear that of a bird in a still May morning. 

When the other boys, too, called to each other, and to the goats 
that they were driving, we could hear every word they said, though 
we could not understand them. Sometimes they threw a small 
stone at some goat that lingered behind the rest, in order to urge 
him on. In this case the stone came bounding on from rock to 
rock, and from precipice to precipice, down the whole side of the 
mountain, and did not stop till it reached a green slope at the foot 
of it, just above where we were sitting. 

At last two of the goats strayed away from the rest, and got 
down upon a series of shelves, where the grass grew very luxuri- 
antly, and there they stopped to feed. We watched them with 
the glass. One of the two got back again and rejoined the flock. 
The other came down lower and lower, until at last he leaped 
down to a shelf where the grass was very rich and green, but 
where it seemed to me he was entirely isolated. I did not see 
how he could possibly get up or down. The place where he came 
down seemed too high for him to leap up again, and below him, for 
a long distance, was what appeared to be a mass of bare and per- 
pendicular rocks. 



20 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



Group of children coming along the road. Conversation with them. 

"Let us see what lie will do," said we. "It seems as if it 
would be impossible for him to get up or down." 

Just then we saw a party of children coming along the road, 
by the side of which we were sitting. They looked like peasant 
children ; and though their faces were bright and beaming, they 
wore old and tattered clothes, as if their mothers were very poor. 
The oldest of them was a girl, apparently about ten years old, with 
sparkling eyes, and curls of pretty auburn hair, though the clothes 
that she wore were as old and tattered as those of the rest. 

As these children came up to us, they all courtesied in a very 
polite manner, and said, speaking in their language, which is a 
species of French, "Good evening, gentleman and lady." 

The little Savoyards are all taught thus to salute the strangers 
that pass them or that they meet on the road. 

"Good evening," said we; and then pointing to the goat, we 
said "Look!" 

They all turned toward the mountain. This goat was so low 
down that he could be plainly seen by the naked eye. The girl 
said, after she had seen what it was, 

" Yes, sir ; a goat." 

"Don't you think he will fall?" said I. 

" Oh no, sir," said the girl. 

" Don't the goats ever fall on the mountains?" said I. 
" Oh no, sir," said the girl. 

Then I held up the glass to her, and said "Look." I made a 
sign for her to look through the glass at the goat and at the 
mountain. 



A GAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



21 



Their awkwardness in looking through the glass. 

Now an opera-glass is a sort of double spy-glass, there being- 
one tube for each eye. The tubes are short, but quite large round, 
and in using the instrument you use both eyes, which is much 
more convenient than to have to shut one eye and look with the 
other, as is necessary in using a spy-glass. 

But the little Savoyard did not know any thing about this, and 
so she winked the left eye, and held up one of the tubes of the 
opera-glass to the right one, making use of the other tube as a 
handle. 

" Ah! you must look with both your eyes," said I; and I 
showed her how to place the glass so that she could look through 
both tubes. She immediately caught sight of the goat, and utter- 
ed an exclamation of the utmost surprise and delight. 

"Ah! look there! look there!" said she; "it makes the goat 
close by us." Then she took away the glass and looked at the 
mountain side with her eyes alone, and then put the glass to her 
eyes again to compare the effect, and seemed to be very much de- 
lighted. She then returned the glass to my hands, and, making 
a low courtesy, she smiled, with an expression of great pleasure 
upon her countenance, and said, "I thank you, sir, very much." 

I then put the glass successively into the hands of the other 
children, and they all got into a great frolic looking through it at 
the goat. 

In the mean time, I saw one of the boys coming down the rocks 
toward the place where the goat was standing. I pointed to him, 
and asked the girl what he was going to do. 

" He is going to disembarrass the goat," said she. 



22 



A RAMBLE AMONG- THE ALPS. 



The boy climbs down to rescue the goat. Powers of climbing. 

Disembarrass, or rather the French representative of that word, 
is the word that Savoyard children use to describe the getting a 
goat down from such a situation. 

It seemed to us utterly impossible that the boy could get down 
to the place. He, however, came on, descending from one rock to 
another ; and when at length the crags became too steep for any 
other mode of descent, he lay on his back and slid himself gradu- 
ally down, keeping himself from going too fast by putting his 
heels in to the clefts and crevices of the rock, and clinging by his 
hands to the projections or to bushes. In this way he descended, 
till at length he came pretty near to the place where the goat was 
standing. 

You see him coming down thus in the picture on the adjoining 
page. The picture represents the boy and the goat as they ap- 
peared to us in looking through the opera-glass. 

For a time the goat was entirely out of the boy's sight, being 
hid by the projections of the rocks, but the boy knew where he 
was by his bleating. The goats have an instinct to keep up 
a continual bleating when they are separated from the rest of the 
flock, and this assists very much in finding them when they are 
lost. 

They are provided, also, with a peculiar conformation of feet, and 
also of muscles, which gives them great power and skill in climb- 
ing. Their hoofs are small, nearly flat at the bottom, and pointed, 
and they are formed of a substance that does not slip at all upon 
the rocks, so that they can walk along very easily on rocky slopes 
almost precipitous. 



A KAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 23 



Picture of the little Savoyard going down for the goat. 




DISEMBARRASSING THE GOAT. 



The muscles, too, of their fore legs are prodigiously strong, so 
that they can lift themselves up by means of them to the brink 
of a rocky ledge, above where they stand, in the most remarkable 
manner. The chamois* which is the wild goat of Switzerland, 
possesses this power in a still higher degree. He can draw him- 
self up with ease to any place that he can reach with his fore feet. 



But to return to the story. 

* For a picture of the chamois, see the vignette on the title-page of this volume. 



24 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



He drives the goat down. The goat walks along the rocks. 

The boy could not get down quite to where the goat was, so he 
stopped on the shelf above, and then broke off a bush, and, lean- 
ing over, he reached down and tried to make him go either one 
way or the other. But the goat seemed afraid to move. He 
walked along a few steps, and looked up, but it was too high for 
him to leap up, and too steep for him to climb. Then, as the boy 
continued whipping him, he contrived to turn round, though there 
was scarcely room for him to do so, and went a step or two the 
other way, till he got to the lower corner of the shelf where he was 
standing, and looked down to the rocks below, but he seemed to be 
afraid to leap down. 

In the mean time, however, the boy continued whipping him 
with the switch, and at last he leaped. He came down upon a place 
where the rock was entirely bare, and it seemed to us, from where 
we viewed it, to be perpendicular. There he began to walk along, 
and it appeared precisely to us as if he were walking along the 
face of a precipice fifty feet above any place where there was the 
least footing. Of course, the rocks where he walked must have 
really sloped outward to afford him support, but that was wholly 
invisible to us, and he seemed to be actually walking in the air 
along the face of the precipice. After going along in this way six 
or eight steps, he came at length to roughnesses and projections, 
and, leaping from one of these to another, he finally gained the 
summit of a steep green slope two or three hundred feet long, by 
which he descended to the level ground. 

We waited at the foot of the mountain for some time, talking 
with the children, and amusing them by letting them look through 



A RAMBLE AMONG THE ALPS. 



25 



Conversation with the boy when he came down. Up the valley. 

the opera-glass at various objects seen in the landscapes that 
were spread before us on the slopes of the mountains around, un- 
til the goats had all come down, and then the boys who had been 
driving them came to us too. We talked with them for some 
time, and let them look through the glass. The one who had 
climbed down to rescue the goat did not appear to be more than 
twelve years old. He was a very bright and happy-looking boy, 
and seemed quite proud of his powers of climbing about on the 
side of the mountain. He looked much pleased when we told 
him that we had been watching him while he was climbing by 
looking at him through the glass. 

But it is now almost three o'clock, which is the hour at which 
the char is to come that is to take us up through the gorge of the 
mountains to some place above, so I must close this letter. We 
have very little idea what sort of a place we shall find ; but, as I 
have already said, we are sure there must be something remarka- 
ble up that road, on account of there being so many diligence-loads 
of passengers going up every day. Besides, we know that it leads 
to a very celebrated valley, which lies at the foot of Mont Blanc, 
and is surrounded by high mountains. 

For, notwithstanding all that I have said about the stupendous 
grandeur of the mountains that hem in this valley on every side, 
they are not, after all, high mountains for Switzerland. Though 
they are five or six thousand feet high, they are green and sum- 
mer-like on the very summits. In some places in the valley, it is 
true that we can see, through openings between the nearer mount- 
ains, a few peaks where there lie some scattered patches of snow, 



26 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



The snow-capped mountains. Some account of Chamouny. 

in sheltered places and hollows. These peaks are a great deal 
higher than the nearer mountains, but still, for Swiss mountains, 
they are not very high. We are going up the valley to places 
where we shall see immense ranges, which rise so high that they 
are covered sometimes, for fifty miles, with continuous beds of 
snow that never melt, but remain of the same dazzling whiteness 
and brilliancy from summer to winter, and from age to age. We 
can not see these lofty summits from this valley, but we are going 
where they will be in full view. We intend even to ascend 
among them. 



LETTER II. 

UP TO CHAMOUNY. 

Vale of Chamouny, Friday, Aug. 17. 

Chamouny, where I am now writing, is one of the most cele- 
brated valleys of the Alps. It lies, in the first place, very high. 
To get to it, we have to ascend roads so steep that large carriages 
can not go. Indeed, the valley is so high, and it lies so surround- 
ed with craggy peaks, and glaciers, and mountains of snow, that it 
was a long time before it was known at all to the rest of the world 
that there was any such valley there ; and long after it was known, 
the way that led to it was a path so rough, and steep, and narrow, 
and rocky, that very few people ever went up to it. 

The way to Chamouny from Cluses, where I wrote my last let- 
ter, lies through the narrow gorge between the mountains, which 
I have already described as opening up the valley from very near 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



27 



The baths of St. Gervais. Sallenches. The small carriages. 

the hotel. I had heard that the valley widened again farther up, 
and that at one place there was a branch valley, or rather deep 
ravine, which penetrated in among the mountains to a spot where 
there were natural springs of hot water, which possessed medicinal 
qualities ; and that there was a large hotel there, and a great deal 
of company, consisting of persons who came there to drink the 
water for their health, and to bathe in it. The name of this place 
is the Baths of St. Gervais. 

I was desirous to see how a large hotel and a great concourse 
of company would seem in such a wild place among the mount- 
ains, and so I determined to stop there one night, at least, on the 
way. 

There was also quite a large town in an open part of the valley 
before coining to St. Gervais, which I was also desirous to see. 
The name of this place is Sallenches. Sallenches is the place 
where the good road comes to an end in going to Chamouny, and 
the steep part of it begins. There the diligence stops, and the 
travelers take small carriages, like little covered wagons, for the 
rest of the way. 

These little carriages are of very curious forms and fashions, 
and there is a great variety of them. Almost every one that you 
see is different from the rest, but they are all very peculiar, and 
entirely different from any thing to be seen in other parts of the 
world. 

The diligences, too, are peculiar. They are very large and ex- 
ceedingly well made. They contain four compartments, and in 
this respect they are like the diligences of France ; but they differ 



28 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



Some account of the different carriages. The char a banc comes to the door. 

from these last in being made in such a manner that the tops of 
all the compartments but one will turn down, like the top of a 
barouche, and thus leave the seats all open to the sky, so that the 
company of travelers can have an unobstructed view of the mount- 
ains around them as they ride along. 

In the French diligences the compartments are closed at the 
top, and the baggage is placed above. You will find a picture of 
one of these diligences in The Museum Story-book. These 
Swiss diligences being made to open at the top, some other place, 
it is plain, must be contrived for the baggage ; so they have made 
a sort of long box for it underneath the coach, and there it rides 
very safely, serving for ballast, also, in the mean time, to prevent 
the diligence from upsetting. This is quite an important advant- 
age on these dangerous mountain roads. 

We thought that we would go to Sallenches in a carriage of 
our own, so I asked the servant-girl to engage me one. When 
the carriage came to the door, I found it was of the kind called a 
char a banc. This is a very common kind of carriage in Switz- 
erland, but I believe it is not made in any other part of the world. 
The door is in one side of it, and the seat is on the other side, so 
that in riding you go sideways. Some people describe it by say- 
ing that it is a short sofa placed on wheels, covered with a top, 
and drawn along endwise. Others say that it is like a very short 
and very small omnibus, with a seat only on one side, and the 
door on the other. But I think that Mr. Doepler can give you a 
better idea of it than any description would afford, so I shall ask 
him to make a drawing of it to be inserted here. 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 29 



Picture of the char a banc. Inconvenience of it. 




THE CHAR A BANC. 



The char a banc is certainly a very funny carriage, and I should 
think that a party of children might enjoy a ride in one exceed- 
ingly. But we did not like it very well. In the first place, it is 
not pleasant to ride sideways ; then the top of our char a Tbanc 
was so low, that we had to put our heads out in the most awk- 
ward and inconvenient way, to see the cliffs and summits of the 
mountains — they were so high, and the top of the carriage was so 
low. 

We went on, however, up the valley, and enjoyed the ride very 



30 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



Impressive aspect of the mountains. Stone bridge leading to Sallenches. 

much indeed. It was quite impressive to look up to the summit 
of the mountains that overhung our heads, and see the green fields 
and pretty farm-houses away up in the sky, and higher still the 
craggy rocks towering above them, with tall trees on the summits, 
dwindled in the distance to so small a size that we could scarce 
discern them. 

At length the valley widened, and we came to a place where 
there was quite a broad expanse of beautiful and fertile country 
below, though it was bordered by the same stupendous mountains 
on either side. In some places the cultivated land extended high 
up the side of the mountains, and the view of it was as if half the 
sky was laid out into green fields and smiling pastures, with for- 
ests and cliffs of rocks above. At other places, the mountain land 
rose suddenly from the level plain in perpendicular precipices thou- 
sands of feet high, with broad slopes of cultivated land above, which 
ascended till they were lost among the fleecy clouds of the sky. 

At last we came to a place where there was a stone bridge, 
which led across the river to the town of Sallenches, on the other 
side. In turning to cross the bridge we came into view of an im- 
mense mass of snowy mountains, which were seen through the 
opening of the valley above us. The highest summit of these 
mountains was Mont Blanc. The whole range was covered with 
immense fields of snow, that glistened in the evening sun, and 
looked as cold and wintry as if it were January there, while yet 
the sun was shining so warm in the valley where we were that 
we suffered from the heat, even though we were well shaded by the 
carriage top. 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



31 



View of the sides of the mountains from the windows of the inn. 

We spent the night at Sallenches. From the window of our 
room at the inn we had a full view of the snowy peaks, and also 
of the immense, slopes of green and cultivated land on the sides 
of the lower mountains that were nearer to us. Directly opposite 
the inn, for example, about a mile from us across the valley, there 
was one vast mountain side spread out before us, with pastures, 
groves, forests, fields, villages, and hamlets rising one above an- 
other to the clouds. With the glass we could examine every thing 
in the most minute detail. We could see the men and the wom- 
en going in and out at the cottage doors ; we could see the zigzag 
paths leading up and down, with the boys ascending and descend- 
ing, and driving goats or cows before them. It was as if a belt 
of land near where you live, in America, two miles wide and three 
or four miles long, were to be lifted up on its edge, as it were, be- 
fore you, so that you could survey it all from your chamber win- 
dow, and, with a spy-glass, examine every thing that it contains. 
Such a supposition as that will give you some idea of the views 
of scenery we have among the Alps, when looking at the slopes of 
the lower mountains. Then, if you suppose a range of immense 
precipices of gray rocks, with here and there a group of tall pin- 
nacles rising above them, to be placed at the upper edge of the 
landscape so displayed to your view, and, finally, above and be- 
yond all, a group of mountain summits formed wholly of ice and 
snow, you will have quite a correct conception of Swiss scenery. 

From Sallenches to the Baths of St. Gervais the distance is 
not very great, and there was a sort of omnibus that went and re- 
turned every day, so we went in the omnibus. We took care, 



32 



UP TO CI1AMOUNY. 



Advance up the valley. Situation of the Baths of St. Gervais. 

however, to get up upon the top of it, so that we could have an 
uninterrupted view of the scenery. 

We rode along the open valley for an hour or two, in a narrow 
road which led through green and pretty fields, until at length we 
crossed a torrent, and then turned in toward the mountains, and 
entered a deep ravine. The torrent which we had crossed came 
out Iby this ravine. It was very narrow, and the sides of it were 
very steep and high, and they were covered with forests of firs, 
which gave to the scene a very shaded and secluded aspect. The 
ground, however, that formed the bottom of the valley was smooth 
and beautiful. It was laid out like a park, with a pretty, winding 
road along the bank of the torrent in the middle of it, and walks 
under the trees on each side, and little bridges and seats, and 
steps leading up the declivities, seen here and there through open- 
ings in the foliage. 

We passed by several buildings that were situated very prettily 
along the banks of the stream, and at last we came to the hotel. 
The hotel was at the very head of the ravine, and the steep sides 
of the mountain, covered with forests, rose abruptly all around it 
and shut it closely in. The form and arrangement of the build- 
ings was very peculiar. You see a picture of them on the next 
page. There is a great building in the centre, which extends 
across the valley, and two long wings, like pavilions, extending 
forward on each side. There are also two other long wings run- 
ning back, which are not seen in the engraving, and another range 
of edifices extending across in the rear, so that the whole estab- 
lishment covers a great deal of ground. 



34 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



Arrangements and accommodations. Amusements for the guests. The balancer. 

It also contains a great many conveniences of various kinds 
for the accommodation and amusement of the guests. There is a 
large parlor in one of the wings, where the company spend their 
evenings. Besides this, there are several rooms fitted up for dif- 
ferent sorts of games, and piazzas to walk in, and balconies to sit 
in, and a library-room filled with books, and a long dining-room 
where the tables were set for all the company together. There is 
also, in the rear of the hotel, a long range of buildings in the in- 
ner court, used for bath-rooms, with pumps that are all the while 
pumping up water into them. The pumps are worked by a wa- 
ter-wheel that is turned by the torrent, which runs in a channel 
made for it below. 

In front of the hotel we saw, as we approached it, a number of 
donkeys standing, ready saddled and bridled, for ladies and gentle- 
men w r ho might wish to ascend the paths that lead up the sides of 
the ravine, or go out into the open valley below. Some were 
coming and going on these donkeys. Children were playing about 
the court-yards too. Some were trundling hoops, some drawing 
little wagons about, and some swinging in the great swings that 
you see on the left hand in the engraving. The French children 
call a swing a balancer.* 

We liked this place so much that we staid a day here. I talk- 
ed with some of the French children on the piazzas, and showed 
them a French picture-book which I had in my knapsack. It 
amused me to hear these children talk to each other in French 
about the pictures. One of them was learning English, and she 
* The French word is balangoir. 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



35 



Zigzag paths. Village above. The little refreshment-room. 

talked a little with me. She had an English nurse who was 
teaching her. 

We also ascended one of the zigzag paths which led up out of 
the ravine to the country above. It took half an hour for us to 
go up. It was as steep all the way as we could climb. On the 
way we saw the torrent that comes in at the head of the ravine, 
falling down over the rocks in the middle of an awful chasm, 
where it would be impossible for any one to go. 

When we got half way up the ascent, we met some girls stand- 
ing in the path talking. We asked them if we were in the right 
road to go to the village. The village is above, on the brink of 
the ravine. They said yes, and one of them said, moreover, that 
she was going up, and that she would show us the way. 

After a time we reached the top, and there we found an open 
country and a village. We went into a little summer-house 
which we came to, where they kept refreshments for sale, and we 
had a bottle of what they call foaming lemonade. It is lemonade 
corked up tight in bottles, and so made that it foams like soda- 
water when you pour it out. It makes a very refreshing drink, 
especially for persons who have been toiling for half an hour up a 
zigzag path as steep almost as a staircase leading up into a 
steeple. 

When we came down to the baths again, we engaged a carriage 
to take us the next day up to Chamouny. The distance was 
about twelve miles, and most of the way up steep hills. We 
would not have a char a banc any more, because we wished to see 
the country, so we engaged what the man called a calash. It was 



36 UP TO CHAMOUNY. 

We leave the baths in a calash. Ride up the valley. 

a sort of "barouche. There were two horses. You can see us 
setting off in it on our journey in the engraving of the inn. 

We first came down the little road leading out of the ravine, 
and then turned up the great valley. We crossed the torrent of 
the Arve by a very wild-looking bridge. On each side of the river, 
for nearly a quarter of a mile, the ground was covered with big 
stones that had been brought down by the inundations of the 
river, so that in this part of its course the waters were flowing 
through a scene of desolation which they themselves had made. 
After crossing the river, we began to ascend the valley. The 
road turned, and began to wind obliquely up the mountain side. 
It went up, up, up, continually. All the way we had splendid 
views of the valley, and the scenery was on so grand a scale that 
for many hours we could look back upon our whole road, from the 
very beginning of it, where it issued from the gorge of the baths. 
We could see the little village of St. Gervais on the brink above, 
and all the stupendous mountains that towered around it on every 
side. 

Still we went up, up, up, twisting and twining around peaks 
and ravines, and traversing, sometimes dark forests, and some- 
times smooth and fruitful fields, but always with lofty mountains 
on one side and the deep valley on the other. On the mountain 
side we passed continually the dry beds of torrents, and sometimes 
living streams. These last came tumbling down over the cliffs 
and precipices, far above our heads, in immense cascades, and then 
ran roaring and foaming across our path in a straight channel wall- 
ed in for them ; for in all this region it is the custom to wall in 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



37 



Prospects. Walling in the torrents. Disappearing of a lake. 

the streams that come down the mountains when they approach 
the level land, in order to prevent the devastations which they 
would otherwise occasion when the snows melt in the spring. At 
such times the torrents bring down immense quantities of mud 
and stones, which, if the water was not confined by these walls, 
they would spread over all the adjoining fields, and spoil the cul- 
tivation of them. 

There was one place where there was once a very pretty little 
lake, lying in a hollow on the mountain side, near where the road 
passed along. This lake was situated at a place where the chain 
of Mont Blanc, with all the snow-covered summits around him, 
were in full view on the other side of the valley, and they were 
in such a direction in relation to the lake that, by standing in a 
certain position on the shores of it, an observer could see all those 
lofty domes of snow reflected in the water ; and travelers in for- 
mer times used to stop here, and get out of their carriages, and 
walk along on the shore of the lake until they reached the right 
spot for seeing the reflection. But all this is now gone, for there 
came down one spring, not very long ago, such an immense quan- 
tity of mud, stones, and gravel, in consequence of a great rain on 
the mountains, that the lake w T as filled up entirely ; and when we 
came by it there was nothing to be seen but a great expanse of 
stones and gravel, with a small stream flowing quietly through 
the centre of it, wholly unconscious of the mischief it had done. 

The stream, however, is not to be condemned for this mischief, 
since the ultimate end w T hich it is aiming at by its action is a very 
good one, and in process of time this end will surely be accom- 



38 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



We continue ascending. The raspberries and cream. Beggars. 

plished. Having first filled up the lake with stones and gravel, 
it will now gradually, in future inundations, spread a fine sedi- 
ment over the surface of it, which, in process of time, will make 
good soil ; and so, in the end, there may be, where the lake once 
stood, a tract, forming a smooth and fruitful field, the product of 
which will nourish a whole family of mountaineers. 

Still up, up, up, higher and higher, until at last we came to a 
village, where the coachman stopped to rest his horses and to give 
them something to eat. There was a queer-looking inn there. 
We went in to see how it appeared inside. We found some rasp- 
berries on a table, and so we had some raspberries and milk. 

We finished the raspberries and milk before the horses had half 
eaten their grain, and so we went to take a walk. We saw some 
children, and we gave them bonbons that we had in our pockets. 
We had bought a quantity of bonbons in Geneva, so as to have 
them ready for this purpose. 

There were beggars too, who came to our carriage when at last 
the horses were ready, and waited there till we got in, and then 
held out their caps to beg. It is very difficult to determine wheth- 
er it is best to give these beggars any money or not. They look 
very poor and miserable, and one pities them very much indeed. 
But if every body gives them a little money, they get a great deal, 
and that tends to make other people think it is better to beg than 
to work, and thus to increase the begging and diminish industry. 

There are a great many beggars in Switzerland, and some of 
them are very importunate. Once there was a foolish-looking old 
man, who came hobbling up to the side of the diligence, and held 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



39 



Manners and customs of the beggars. Some of them bring flowers. 

out his cap for me to give him something. I felt in my pockets, 
and found that I had no change except one little copper coin 
which was of very small value, so I took that and tossed it down 
into his cap. He did not thank me at all till he first looked into 
his cap to see what he had got. He fumbled for the coin very 
eagerly, and held it up to his eyes, and then, as soon as he saw 
what he had got, he made up a dreadful face at me. 

It is true, the value of the coin was only the fifth part of a cent, 
so I did not blame him much for making a face. 

Sometimes children, when they see you walking, stop by the 
road-side till you come along, and then, putting on a very mourn- 
ful face, and speaking in a very whining tone, they ask you if you 
will not have the kindness to give them " a little something." 

At other times, when they see you coming, they run and gather 
a few flowers, and then stand ready and present them to you with 
many smiles and looks of good- will ; but they expect, if you take 
the flowers, that you will give them something in return. 

Others will offer to go and show you the way where they think 
you are going ; and if you tell them that you do not wish them 
to go, that you know the way yourself, or that you are not going 
to that place at all, still they run on and pretend to direct you. 

Last evening I went out to take a little walk down the valley. 
J ust as I was entering a forest, a boy came up, and, accosting me 
in a very polite manner, asked if I would like to have him guide 
me to the cascade. 

It seems there was a celebrated cascade, called the Cascade of 
the Pilgrims, about half a mile or a mile beyond. 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



Account of a walk toward the Cascade of the Pilgrims. 

" No," said I, " we are not going to the cascade. We are only 
going to take a little walk in the forest." 

46 Ah, but you will get lost in the forest, I am afraid," said he. 
"It is a very dangerous place to get lost in." 

"Oh no," said I; "I am accustomed to forests. I am an 
American. In America we have immense forests, a great deal 
larger than this. I am not at all afraid." 

So I took one of several paths that led into the wood, but the 
boy followed me, saying that that was a very bad path, and that 
it led to very bad and dangerous places, and I had better not go 
there. 

I told him that I was very glad to hear that, for the bad and 
dangerous places were just what I came to Switzerland to see. 

So I went on. Still he followed. I told him he might go with 
us just as far as he pleased, but that I certainly should not give 
him any money. 

Then he went back and left us to ourselves. 

But to return to our journey to Chamouny. After leaving the 
inn, we went on continually ascending, in the midst of scenery 
growing every moment more and more grand and wild. The 
road was very steep indeed — so steep in some places that it was 
quite difficult for the horses to draw us up. It was very rough 
too, being paved with big and shapeless stones, and very narrow, 
so that when we met other mountain carriages coming we had to 
crowd in under the cliff, or go out carefully to the brink of the 
precipice, and stop there while the other carriage went by. 

In one narrow place in the valley, where the face of the mount- 



UP TO CHAMOUNY. 



41 



The boy with the trumpet. Old man. We enter the Vale of Chamouny at last. 

am on the other side consisted of an immense perpendicular wall 
of rock a thousand feet high, a boy stood by the road-side with a 
sort of trumpet which he was going to blow to let us hear the 
echo. So, when we came to the spot, he blew a loud blast, and 
then, after a short pause, the music all came back to us, softened 
and subdued in tone, but very audible. The wave of sound had 
gone across the valley, and had then been reflected back from the 
side of the mountain, and so had returned to us again. 

Presently, in a very steep, and wild, and dangerous place, en- 
tirely solitary, we saw an old man by the road-side, and when we 
came by he held out his cap to beg. I pitied him, because he 
looked so old and forlorn, and I gave him a little money. I won- 
dered where he lived, as there was no house in sight, nor indeed 
any place for one. The country around presented nothing to view 
but crags, and precipices, and roaring torrents, and it seemed too 
desolate and wild almost for even the bears to live in. Pres- 
ently I came to a place where there was a great cleft in the rock 
by the road-side, and it was here the old man lived, at least during 
the daytime. He had a little roof over the place, and a seat in- 
side, so that he could sit down when he was in there waiting for 
carriages to come along. Where he went to at night I do not 
know. 

We went on some mile3 farther, all the time ascending higher 
and higher, until at length there opened before us a pretty wide 
and very beautiful valley, with snow-capped mountains all around 
it, and great glaciers streaming down from the snowy regions 
above into the midst of green fields below. This was the valley 



42 



MONT BLANC. 



Account of Chamouny. General character of the village. 

of Chamouny. The village was in the centre of it, lying very pret- 
tily embosomed in the midst of green and fruitful fields. We now 
drove on rapidly, and in half an hour reached the village, and took 
up our quarters at the inn. 

I shall tell you what sort of a place Chamouny is in my next 
letter. 



LETTER III. 

MONT BLANC. 

Chamouny, Aug. 18. 

Chamouny is a very remarkable place. It is a village that 
consists almost altogether of great hotels. Besides the hotels, 
there are a few little shops for the sale of curiosities and souvenirs 
of Mont Blanc to the visitors, and some pretty little gardens and 
summer-houses belonging to the hotels ; and then fifty or one 
hundred rude stone houses, or rather cabins, where the mules live 
that carry the tourists up the mountains, and also the men and 
women who take care of them — and that is all. 

In other words, Chamouny is a village which is devoted wholly 
to the business of exhibiting Mont Blanc, and the other mount- 
ains around him, to the throngs of visitors that come every year 
from various parts of the world to visit the mighty monarch. 
There is a raging torrent of turbid water from the glaciers flowing 
through the town, but there are almost literally no streets. The 
people seem to have built their houses confusedly every where, 
leaving the carriages to find their way through them as they can. 



MONT BLANC. 



43 



Views of Mont Blanc. v Occupations of the people. Morning. Evening. 

There are, however, some open spaces before and around the ho- 
tels, in the centre of the village, which might, perhaps, be called 
places or squares if they were not so small. Some are on one 
side of the river and some on the other, with a bridge connecting 
them. Then there are little gardens, and terraces, and pavilions, 
and other pleasant places near the hotels, where people sit and view 
the surrounding mountains, or, with the spy-glasses that are set 
up there, watch the tourists who are ascending or descending Mont 
Blanc, when ascensions are made. 

The open spaces which I have mentioned are very quiet and 
still in the middle of the day, but in the mornings and evenings 
they are full of movement and bustle. In the morning, great num- 
bers of guides stand about ready to be hired, or waiting for the 
gentlemen and ladies to come who have hired them. Groups of 
mules are seen at the doors, some saddled and bridled for rides, 
and others standing patiently by while the guides and porters are 
loading their backs with a pile of trunks and carpet-bags. Every 
body is planning excursions ; nothing else is talked of or thought 
of. In the evening we have the reverse of the picture ; then every 
body is coming home. Trains of mules are arriving, bringing in 
ladies and gentlemen who have been up to the Sea of Ice, or to the 
Flegere, or the Brevent, or who have just arrived from the north 
by the pass of old Black Head. All is movement and bustle. 
Every body is telling what he has done to-day or what he is going 
to do to-morrow. The ladies are recounting their adventures, and 
describing the steep and rocky paths they have come down upon 
their mules, and the awful precipices which they have crept along 



44 



MONT BLANC. 



The ascending of Mont Blanc. Cost of an ascension. 

the brink of. Some look frightened, some look tired, some look 
vexed and ill-humored, while others seem excited and pleased, and 
step down from their mules to the step-ladder placed there for 
them with a contented and happy look, which denotes that they 
are greatly pleased with the adventures of the day. 

Thus the morning and the evening are the bustling times at 
Chamouny. In the middle of the day, all is very quiet and still. 
There are a few persons to be seen sitting about the piazzas of the 
hotels, or coming in from short excursions which they have been 
making in the morning. These amuse themselves by recounting 
to one another what they have done, or talking about the plan of 
their future tours. Some saunter into the little shops, and look 
over the souvenirs and curiosities, while others go to the pavilion 
and look through the spy-glasses at the upper regions of Mont 
Blanc, and study the forms of the immense precipices of ice and 
snow which they see there, or trace the track of those who make 
the ascension to the summit. 

Whenever a party makes the ascension of Mont Blanc, it pro- 
duces a great excitement at Chamouny. The ascension is a great 
undertaking. It costs about two hundred dollars for each person 
for guides, porters, provisions, and the various preparations and 
outfits that are requisite. It is necessary to spend one night amid 
the ice and snow. The place where they thus spend the night is 
a little hut made in a sheltered position under some immense 
rocks. 

These rocks are a range of peaks that shoot up from among the 
vast fields of snow about half way up the mountain, and they are 



MONT BLANC. 



45 



The Big Mules and the Little Mules. Height of the ascent. 

so large that they are plainly to be seen from the valley. They 
look a little like a line of mules walking along. They are called 
the Big Mules.* They are called the big mules, to distinguish 
them from the smaller rocks that crop out from the snow pretty 
near the summit, perhaps a mile from it, which are called the Lit- 
tle Mules. The Little Mules can hardly be discerned by the na- 
ked eye in the valley, but they can be discovered very plainly 
with a glass, forming a little black speck in the middle of immense 
fields of glittering snow. 

You can not see the hut where the people pass the night at the 
Big Mules, for it is hidden behind the rocks. They have placed 
the hut in the most sheltered place they could find, for it is in- 
tensely cold there, even in mid-summer, and the wind roars around 
the rocks, and over the snow and ice, with great fury. You hear 
a sound as of thunder, too, all night long. This sound is pro- 
duced by the avalanches which are continually coming down from 
the rocks and mountains around. 

All these rocks and the summit of the mountain beyond are in 
full view from the valley, though the distance is very great. It 
is eight or nine miles in a straight line through the air to the sum- 
mit of the mountain, and by the winding and zigzag road that 
adventurers are obliged to travel in making the ascent it can not 
be less than twenty-five or thirty miles. Of course, it is impossi- 
ble to go up and come down in one day, and that is the reason 
why the party always encamp one night in the cabin under the 
rocks, so as to set out from thence the next morning. 

* In French, the Grands Mulets. 



46 



MONT BLANC. 



Carrying up the provisions. Interest excited in the village. 

They have to carry up provisions, of course, for their supper, 
and also for their breakfast and dinner the second day, and wood, 
too, to make a fire, for nothing of the vegetable kind grows at such 
a vast elevation. All this makes considerable weight, and several 
persons are necessary to carry it. Then, the traveler who makes 
the ascent sometimes requires a good deal of assistance from strong 
men to help him up the icy precipices or across the chasms. 
They carry ropes and a ladder to assist in crossing these perilous 
places. For all these purposes a large number of men are re- 
quired, and this is what makes the expense so great. 

Whenever a party makes the ascension, all the guides of the 
village and all the visitors at the hotels assemble to see them set 
out. When the party enter the forest at the foot of the mount- 
ain, the spectators lose sight of them, and see them no more all 
the day. Just before sunset, however, by watching with glasses, 
they can see them coming out upon the edge of a vast field of 
snow, away up in the sky, as it were, and then follow them as they 
go creeping slowly on, in a long line, toward the great black rocks 
which shelter the cabin. They soon, however, turn round a point 
of the rock and disappear. 

The next day, in the case of such an ascension, there is a great 
interest felt at Chamouny in watching the party all the morning 
as they go on toward the summit. We know exactly where the 
track is that they are to take, and so, when they disappear for a 
time, we know precisely where we are to expect to see them 
again. 

In order that you may imagine just how it seems to be watch- 



MONT BLANC. 



47 



The manner in which the adventurers are watched from below. 

ing a party of men traveling through these lofty regions of ice and 
snow from a position in the valley, fix your mind upon some town 
about nine miles from where you live. Imagine a tract of coun- 
try, ten or fifteen miles square, at that distance, to be raised up 
into the air, in the depth of winter, twice as high as the clouds, 
and then inclined a little toward you, so that with a spy-glass you 
can survey the whole surface of it from the windows of the house 
where you live. Suppose that, in being so raised up, the land 
was broken in such a manner as to display here and there im- 
mense precipices of rock scattered about among the fields of snow. 
You must also suppose that there are wide and deep rivers in the 
country, two miles wide and several hundred feet deep, and that 
these rivers were always frozen to the bottom by the coldness of 
the winter, and that when the country was raised up, this ice was 
rent, and broken, and thrown into heaps in some places, and left 
in ranges of icy precipices and cliffs at others, and that the snow- 
banks were some of them one hundred feet high. Imagine now, 
that while all this wintry region remains in the sky, it becomes 
summer where you live below, and that in the middle of a very 
warm day, when the sun beats down upon you intensely, you take 
a spy-glass and look at the vast wintry region in the air, nine 
miles away from you, and there you see a line of twelve or four- 
teen men, like black mites, creeping along in the snow, up some 
steep slope there, so small that you can scarcely discern them, and 
seeming, at the distance from which you view them, to be moving 
so slowly that you have to watch them some time before you sat- 
isfy yourselves that they are moving at all. If you picture all 



48 



MONT BLANC. 



How they appear. Account of the garden. Avalanches. 

this distinctly to your mind, it will help you to form some idea 
of what it is to watch an ascension of Mont Blanc from the valley 
of Chamouny. 

In the garden of one of the hotels is a little terraced mound, 
with steps leading up to it, and paths and seats at the top ; and 
along the sides of the several terraces a row of little cannons are 
placed, which are fired when a party of adventurers reach the top 
of the mountain, and they are also fired again when they return. 
There is great rejoicing, of course, when they return ; for, besides 
the friends which the adventurers themselves have at the hotels, 
the guides have wives and children who are all more or less anx- 
ious for the safety of their husbands and fathers while they are 
gone up the mountain, and they are all greatly rejoiced when they 
know that they have safely returned. 

The chief danger to be feared in those lofty regions is from av- 
alanches. There are in many places ranges of cliffs there which 
run along on the crests of the mountains, or hang suspended at 
the sides, that are composed entirely of ice and snow. These 
cliffs are many hundreds of feet high, and immense masses of 
them are continually breaking off, and sliding down the mountain 
sides, sweeping away all before them. We can see these cliffs 
from the valley, and with the glass we can discern large portions 
here and there, with rents and fissures which half detach them 
from their support, so that they seem just ready to fall. We 
watch them sometimes a long while, hoping that they will fall, 
and wondering why they do not. When they do fall, the mass, 
however solid it may be in the cliff, is dashed to powder on the 



MONT BLANC. 



49 



The cliffs of ice. Appearance of an avalanche as seen from the valley. The guns. 

rocks at the first blow, and then it slides down the long descent, 
till at length it lodges in some deep ravine, or at the bottom of 
some awful chasm, where it slowly melts away. 

The fall of one of these avalanches produces a sound as loud as 
thunder for a distance of two or three miles all around the place 
where it falls, but at a distance of nine miles it is not heard at all. 
At that distance, too, the falling mass looks very small ; and it 
has, moreover, so precisely the appearance of a fall of water, that 
the only way to determine whether what you are looking at through 
the telescope is an avalanche or a cascade is to watch it a few min- 
utes to see whether it is permanent, or whether, after running for 
a time, it comes to an end. 

On the day when we arrived at Chamouny, a party came down 
from Mont Blanc, and reached home in the evening. There was 
another party that had gone up that day. We knew, of course, 
that they were that night at the cabin under the rocks, half way 
up — that is, provided they had met with no mishap — and we an- 
ticipated great pleasure in watching them as they went on up to 
the summit the next morning. We knew that the guns on the 
little terrace would be fired when they began to draw nigh to the 
summit. 

Accordingly, about ten o'clock we heard the guns. We imme- 
diately went to the garden. The little mound where the guns 
were placed was on one side of the garden, and on the other was a 
sort of summer-house on a terrace, where there were spy-glasses 
for viewing the mountain. One of the glasses was attached to the 
corner of the building on the outside, and there were others at the 
20 D 



50 



MONT BLANC. 



People assemble to watch the summit of the mountain. The boys. The young girls. 

windows. There were several people on the terraces and in the 
garden walks, some looking at the mountain through the spy-glass, 
and others through opera-glasses, or long-views, as they call them, 
of their own. Some were trying to see if they could not discern 
the line of guides and travelers with the naked eye. The guns 
were firing salutes, which added greatly to the animation of the 
scene. 

We went into the summer-house, and soon had an opportunity 
to look through one of the glasses. After having a little trouble 
in finding out exactly where to look, we at length succeeded in dis- 
covering the company. They appeared like a row of motionless 
black dots on the snow. On looking at them, however, steadily 
for a few moments, we could see a gradual change in their relative 
positions. The line slowly lengthened ; then it divided into two 
parts. In fact, there were two parties, each consisting of a gentle- 
man and his guides, making together twelve or thirteen in all. 
The people who were looking at them with glasses interested them- 
selves in trying to count the travelers. Some thought there were 
twelve, others said thirteen, and some thought that they could 
make out fourteen. 

Several boys — the children, perhaps, of the guides who were upon 
the mountains, and one or two who told me they expected, when 
they grew up, to be guides themselves, were there, all anxious to 
get a peep through the glasses. There were also some of the vil- 
lage girls, two or three together, that came in from time to time to 
see. They were nice, tidy girls, dressed very prettily in the vil- 
lage costume. What the precise nature of the interest was which 



MONT BLANC. 51 



A party ascending the mountain. 



Scene in the garden. 



52 



MONT BLANC. 



The summit of the mountain. Conversation among the spectators. 

they felt in the guides on the mountain, many of whom were young 
men near their own age, I could only conjecture. Whenever they 
came, however, we ail tried to make room for them, and give them 
a little opportunity to look as well as the rest. Mary lent them 
her opera-glasses, with which they could see very well. 

Indeed, they generally thought that the opera-glass was better 
for them than the spy-glasses, for the field of view was wider in it, 
and it was not so difficult for them to find the right place to look. 
Besides, with the opera-glass they were not obliged to take the 
trouble to shut up either of their eyes. 

The very summit of Mont Blanc is an immense dome of snow, 
or rather an immense dome of rock covered with snow. The sides 
of this dome are so steep that it is necessary to ascend obliquely 
in going to the top, but, on drawing nearer to the summit, the as- 
cent becomes much more gradual. When we first saw the line of 
guides and travelers, they were winding slowly up in the oblique 
direction. In about fifteen minutes the line turned, and began to 
proceed directly toward the summit. When, at length, the head 
of the column reached the top, the guns on the terrace were fired 
again to announce to all the valley the successful termination of 
the daring adventure. 

The line of black dots moved slowly on over the summit, and 
disappeared from view. 

"There!" said some one who was watching them through a 
glass, "they have gone, and we shall not see them again for a 
quarter of an hour." 

"Will they come back in a quarter of an hour?" 



MONT BLANC. 



53 



The party are seen coming down. 

" Yes; they seldom remain longer than fifteen or twenty min- 
utes on the summit. The wind almost always blows there, and it 
is so piercingly cold that the hardiest man w^ould perish in a very 
short time. Besides, the air is so much rarefied there that it is 
difficult to breathe." 

We waited fifteen minutes, keeping, however, a good look-out all 
the time through our glasses, and at length the cry was raised, 
" They are coming !" Every body looked to the mountain again, 
and, though nothing could be seen by the naked eye, yet with the 
glasses the head of the column could be distinctly perceived com- 
ing very slowly into view over the smooth white curve of the sum- 
mit. One after another the whole party of adventurers came into 
view. 

We followed them as they came down. Parties always descend 
much more rapidly than they go up, especially upon snow. You 
can slide down the slopes of snow very safely, for you can keep 
yourself from going too fast, and stop yourself at any time with 
the point of your pike-staff, by pressing it into the snow behind 
you as you come down. 

We could see the party coming down the hill, and, from the 
manner in which the little black dots separated from each other — 
some coming faster and some slower, and the whole spreading out 
more or less from time to time over the snow, we knew that they 
were sliding. Just below the great swelling surface over whicfi 
they were descending there was a range of lofty snow-cliffs, which 
formed the brow of a lower mountain somewhat nearer to us. We 
knew that between these cliffs and the place where the party now 



54 



MONT BLANC. 



The model. The track of the ascent laid down upon it. 

were there was a valley, and that soon the line of adventurers 
would go down into it, and disappear for a time. 

Accordingly, in a few minutes they did so disappear, and when 
the last in the row had finally gone out of sight, we went to look 
at the model, to see how long it was likely to be "before they would 
appear again. 

The model that I here refer to is a work which stands on a ta- 
ble in the entry of the inn, and consists of an exact representation 
— as exact, at least, as can be made — of the whole valley of Cha- 
mouny, and all the mountains around it. Every thing in nature, 
so far as possible, is represented in the model— the villages, the 
green fields, the forests, the glaciers, and the fields of snow. 

On this model, the track made by parties ascending Mont Blanc 
is laid down by a red line, so that by examining it, and comparing 
it with the real mountains before us, we could tell, when the party 
disappeared, exactly ichere we were to expect to see them again ; 
and, by the length of the red line between, we could judge pretty 
correctly about what time they would appear. 

Besides, we could see the track on all those portions of the 
snow that were nearest us. There had been two parties up before 
this one within a week, each consisting of about fifteen persons, in- 
cluding the porters and guides. These parties made, of course, 
thirty tracks, which, for the going and coming, made sixty ; and 
now the present party, in ascending, had made fifteen more, 
amounting to seventy-five in all ; and as they all had taken the 
same course, they had made quite a road over the snow. This 
road was not visible near the summit, but it was very distinct- 



MONT BLANC. 



55 



The party coming down. Their forms relieved against the snow. 

ly to be seen on the nearer declivities of the snow. So we watch- 
ed the place where this road finally disappeared, and there, in 
about half an hour, we saw our adventurers coming again into 
view. 

In this manner we continued to observe the party as they came 
on down the successive slopes of the mountains till one o'clock. 
By that time they had come so near that, with the glasses, we 
could distinguish their forms, and see their pike-staves, and ob- 
serve their attitudes and all their motions — the forms of their 
bodies being beautifully delineated in exceedingly fine black lines 
against the surface of the snow. At last they turned off toward 
the cabin at the Grands Mulets, and disappeared, one after anoth- 
er, behind a point of the rock. We saw no more of them, and 
heard no more, until, at about six o'clock in the evening, the guns 
on the little terrace in the garden announced their arrival at the 
village. 

There are a great many excursions that may be made about 
Chamouny besides ascending Mont Blanc. There are immense 
glaciers to be visited, and various lofty eminences to be ascended, 
which afford fine views of Mont Blanc and of the valley. Every 
morning, parties are setting out on these excursions, and returning 
from them in the evening. There is a great deal that is interest- 
ing to see without going out of the valley at all, especially at the 
foot of the glaciers, where the ice comes down into the cultivated 
ground. Glaciers are immense rivers of ice ten or fifteen miles 
long, two or three miles wide, and several hundred feet deep. 



56 



THE GLACIEES. 



Excursion to the glacier. The torrent. Cliffs of ice. 

They come down the mountain sides in immense ravines, the 
ice moving at the rate usually of about an inch an hour. But I 
shall tell you more about the glaciers in my next letter. 



LETTER IV. 

THE GLACIEES. 

Chamouny, Aug. 17. 
I AM now sitting under the shadow of a large rock, in a very 
wild and desolate place, at the foot of one of the glaciers of Cha- 
mouny. On one side is an immense field, some miles in extent, 
entirely covered with big stones that have been brought down by 
the torrents, and that now lie blanching in the sun. The whole 
tract is furrowed with innumerable channels, in many of which the 
turbid water from the glacier is roaring along. Before me is a 
steep, rocky hill, perhaps one thousand feet high. The crest of 
this hill is formed by a line of lofty white cliffs, which hang im- 
pending as if ready to fall. These cliffs are of ice. They are part 
of the glacier. It is a very warm summer's day, and they seem 
to be basking in the rays of the sun, which shines directly upon 
them. 

The range of cliffs extends down along the ridge of the hill into 
the valley, and there they form a mountain of ice several hundred 
feet high, and extend a mile or more across the valley. This icy 
mountain is full before me. The side toward me is a perpendicu- 
lar precipice, and the water that melts from it is dripping down in 
streams. There are monstrous stones on the top of the ice, some 



THE GLACIERS. 



57 



Difficult to get near the ice. Joseph, our little guide. 

as large as houses. Many of them are hanging on the brink, just 
ready to fall. They will fall when the ice melts away a little 
more. 

We can not easily get very near the ice, on account of the great 
number of rocks that lie scattered confusedly over the ground, and 
the torrents of turbid water that are flowing off from it. Some of 
this water flows out from under the ice, and some comes down the 
sides of it in copious streams. Then, too, the faces of the cliffs 
seem cracked and broken away in many places, and are ready to 
fall. All these things make it difficult and dangerous to go very 
near. 

A boy, however, who is with us, has just scrambled over the 
stones, and broken ofT some of the ice and brought it to us. It is 
hard, transparent, and clear. I put a piece of it in a hollow of a 
rock near me, when it soon melted in the rays of the sun, and so 
I had a drink of cool water. 

The name of the boy is Joseph. He is a Swiss boy. He ap- 
pears to be about twelve years old, but he says he is fourteen. 
He is learning to be a guide. I found him at the village of Cha- 
mouny while we wer6 watching the party of men coming down 
the side of Mont Blanc. 

The boy looked so bright and honest, and he answered certain 
questions which I asked him about the parts of the mountain that 
we saw in so intelligent a manner, that I told him I wished to go 
to the foot of the great glacier that afternoon, and I asked him if 
he could show me the way. He said he could, and so I engaged 
him for my guide. After he had showed us the way here, how- 



58 



THE GLACIERS. 



Some account of the glacier. Magnitude of it. Motion of the ice. 

ever, I told him that he need not stay to conduct us back again. 
I intended to remain, I said, for some time, and so he might go 
home. But I have engaged him to be our guide to-morrow morn- 
ing to go up the mountains. He is a pretty small guide, but I 
think he will do very well. 

Since writing the foregoing, I have been looking up at the cliffs 
of ice again that show themselves along on the crest of the 
hill, basking in the sun. Why don't they melt? you w T ill ask. 
That is what almost every one asks when they see them for the 
first time. The truth is, they do melt. They are melting all the 
time. Immense cascades are continually pouring down the rocks 
below them. We have just counted fourteen of these cascades, 
some of them immensely large, that come foaming and tumbling 
down the rocks from the foot of the ice-cliffs, in full view for a 
distance of not less than two miles. One of these cascades is big 
enough of itself to make a river, and the water that comes from 
them all is derived from the melting of the ice above. 

Then why, if this ice is continually melting, does it not all melt 
away and disappear ? 

This is a question that for a long time puzzled every body ex- 
ceedingly. The cause was, however, at last discovered. The 
truth is, that away above and beyond the cliffs of ice that we can 
see here, and high up among the mountains, there is an immense 
sea of ice, filling a valley three or four miles wide and fifteen or 
twenty miles long ; and these cliffs, high as they appear to us, are 
only the lower edges of this immense mass. The whole mass is * 



THE GLACIERS. 



59 



Advance of a glacier into the valley. Ridges of rocks and gravel. 

all the time, too, in a state of slow motion, crowding onward and 
downward to the brow of the rocky hill, and over it, so that, as 
fast as the face of the ice that is exposed to the sun melts away, 
more comes continually crowding down to take its place. In this 
manner the sun is all the time melting the lower portions of the 
glacier, where it comes down toward the valley, and wasting it 
away there, while the mass behind is steadily and incessantly 
crowding on fresh supplies. Thus the cliffs are always melting, 
but they never melt away. 

It is the same with the great mountain ridge of ice which comes 
down to the bottom of the valley. It is continually crowded for- 
ward Ky the ice behind it, so that, at its farther end, it plows up 
the earth and stones before it, and makes great ridges of them. 
It advances very slowly indeed, but it moves with prodigious force; 
and if it were not that the sun melts it away continually at the 
end, it would crowd itself entirely across the valley. When the 
summers are very warm, the heat melts the end of the glacier 
away so much that it does not reach so far, and then the ridge 
which it made by crowding down before is left, and forms a sort 
of hill of stones and gravel. Then, when the summers for some 
years are cold, and the end of the ice is not melted away so fast, 
the crowding forward of it plows up the ground again, and makes 
a new ridge, which, in process of time, is driven forward to the 
others which were formed before. 



I have now returned to the hotel. While I was writing the 
foregoing, seated on the rocks, a large party of visitors came to 



60 



THE GLACIEKS. 



Parties of visitors. The Arvieron. Arch under the ice. 

see the glacier. They came on mules. When they came pretty 
near, they left the mules under the trees of a forest that grows in 
this part of the valley. Very soon another large party came. We 
could see them at a distance following each other in long lines over 
the heaps of stones or across the torrents, the ladies wearing broad- 
brimmed straw hats, after the Swiss fashion, and all armed with 
Alpenstocks, which are long poles, with a pike in one end and 
the hook of a chamois horn in the other. The part of the glacier 
which comes entirely down into the valley is half a "mile long, I 
should think, and half a mile w4de, and it forms a ridge or hill 
several hundred feet high, so that there is room in the valley be- 
fore it for a thousand visitors to come and see it without being in 
each others' way. 

Besides the great cascades that descend from the cliffs of ice 
which appear overhanging the hill, there are great streams which 
gush continually out from under that portion of the ice which 
comes down to the bottom of the valley. One of these is a river 
by itself. The name of it is the Arvieron. It comes out from an 
immense archway under the ice, which is sometimes one hundred 
feet high. It makes this archway itself by melting the ice below 
and causing the ice above to fall down. We sat on the rocks be- 
fore this place for some time, and watched the river pouring out 
from under the archway, and the streams of water from the ice 
above, and we saw small pieces of the ice itself falling down into 
it. There were some large rocks above, ready to fall. We watch- 
ed them for some time, hoping to see them come down, but they 
clung to their places as long as we staid there. 



THE GLACIERS. 



61 



The flowers. The poor beggar-woman. Getting ice. 

Flowers grow and bloom very prettily close to the ice all around, 
wherever there is a little soil to be found among the rocks. There 
are always children there who gather these flowers, and bring them 
to the visitors, hoping that they will in that way get some money. 
It is one of their modes of begging. There was one woman there. 
She looked poor and miserable. She sat on a stone, knitting, un- 
til she saw a party of visitors corning, and then she got up and 
gathered some little flowers, or some small wild strawberries that 
grew there, and offered them to the visitors, in hopes to get some 
money in return. 

At one part of our walk, when we were following a rocky path 
through a wood that had grown up in one of the great ridges of 
gravel that had been heaped up by the glacier, we heard some men 
at work before us, and we saw a mule standing there under a tree. 
The place where the mule was standing was very near the margin 
of the glacier, and the men themselves w T ere upon the ice. We 
wondered what they could be doing. When we came near the 
mystery was explained. They were quarrying blocks of ice from 
the glacier to supply the hotels. 

At first view, it might seem to be very convenient for these ho- 
tels to have such a vast store of ice near them, at all seasons of 
the year, from which to draw their supplies at will, by merely tak- 
ing the trouble to cut it. But consider the great inconvenience 
and trouble of getting upon the glacier, and of then getting out the 
ice, and the long way and the rough road by which it has to be 
conveyed, in baskets on the backs of the mules, to the village ; it 
is not improbable that, after all, the hotels in Broadway may get 



62 



THE GLACIERS. 



Picture of the arch under the ice. 

their supplies more easily from Rockland Lake than those of 
Chamouny from this great glacier. 

Here you see an engraving of the river coming out from the 
glacier. The arch is very high. The water of the river under- 
mines the ice, and then what is above falls down, and thus an arch - 




RIVER ISSUING FROM A GLACIER. 



is formed. Probably the vapor arising from the water helps to 
melt the ice above. This arch would become a great deal larger 
than it is, were it not that the whole mass of the glacier is con- 
stantly advancing, and thus the solid ice above is continually re- 
newed. 



Plan for ascending Montanvert. 



THE GLACIERS. 



Other parties forming. 



It is very easy to go in for a long distance under this arch, but 
it is dangerous to do so, for blocks of ice may at any time fail 
down from the vault above. Yet persons used to go in quite fre- 
quently some years ago, until at last, one day, when three persons 
were there, a large mass of ice fell upon them and crushed them. 
One was killed, and the other two had their legs broken. 

How extremely foolish it is for people to go into dangerous 
places just to show their daring ! 

To-morrow I am going up the mountains to obtain a view of 
the great sea of ice above, from which this glacier comes down. 
This is where Joseph is to go with us to show us the way. We 
are to go by a zigzag path up the face of the mountain for about 
six miles. It is very steep all the way, but when we get up we 
shall be so high that we can look directly down into the great val- 
ley where the Sea of Ice lies, and, if we choose, we can go down 
upon it. The place that we are going to is too high for people to 
live there, but they have built a little inn at a certain spot where 
there is the best view, in order to furnish refreshments for travel- 
ers who come up. The place where this inn stands is called 
Montanvert. We are to set out at six o'clock in the morning, 
and Joseph is to meet us on the bridge in the village, just in front 
of the hotel. I intend to take paper, and pen, and ink with me, 
and keep a journal of the adventures I meet with on the way. 

A great many other parties are forming and maturing their plans 
this evening for excursions on the mountains to-morrow. The 
weather promises to be very fine, and all is exhilaration and ex- 
citement. 



64 THE SEA OF ICE. 



Setting out in the morning. The plain. We begin to ascend. 



LETTER V. 

THE SEA OF ICE. 

Mountain side, Aug., 7 o'clock. 

We are on our way up the mountain. We have been ascend- 
ing about half an hour, and have now seated ourselves in a shady 
place on the rocks and under the trees to rest. 

We set out from the hotel at half past six. The sun was shin- 
ing bright and clear, and gilding the summits of all the surround- 
ing mountains. The place in front of the hotel was full of guides, 
mules, and parties of tourists setting out on various excursions. 

We met Joseph on the bridge as we came out. 

"Ah! here you are, Joseph," said I, "punctual to the time.'' 

He bowed, and saluted us in a very polite and gentlemanly man- 
ner. 

Our path led first through a beautiful little plain of fields and 
meadows, and gradually approached the mountain. Flocks of 
goats passed us going to their pastures, and tinkling their bells 
very prettily in the morning air as they went by. In looking back, 
we could see other parties coming along the road, some on foot and 
some mounted on mules. 

Presently we reached the base of the mountain, and began to 
ascend. The path was steep and rocky ; it was roughly paved 
with big stones, and along the margins of it there was a ridge of 
bigger stones, that had been pried out and thrown to one side in 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



65 



Parties of tourists coming up the path. Conversation with Joseph. 

making it. The path meandered about among the lower hills 
which skirted the base of the mountain, but it ascended rapidly. 
At every turn we had beautiful views of the valley below, and 
of the mountains on the other side. Those mountains are not 
very high, but the tops of them are covered with great patches of 
snow. 

Parties of tourists are continually coming up the path. First 
was a lady on a mule, preceded by a guide, with a gentleman walk- 
ing behind. They seemed to be English. Next, a German teach- 
er and three boys, all on foot. Next, a young girl of sixteen, trip- 
ping on up the path very lightly after her guide, and followed 
closely by her father and her brother. 

" Now, Joseph, you may walk on with Madame, and I will fol- 
low after I have finished my writing."* 
" Very well, sir," says Joseph. 

" There is no danger, I suppose, of my losing my way." 

" No, sir, no danger at all. A little above here the path divides 
into two, and you will take the smallest one. You take the one 
to the left ; it comes to the same thing, but it is a better path." 

So they have gone and left me alone. I see the village below 
me, with the church, and the hotels, and the torrent of the Arve 
pouring through it under the bridge. Around me are pastures, 
with boys driving the cows into them ; I hear the tinkling of the 

* Of course, all my conversation with Joseph is in French. I translate it into 
English as I write. 

20 E 



66 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



The auberge. Curiosities. Luncheon of bread and cheese. 

"bells. Far below I see new parties coming up. Some are very 
distant, and are seen creeping along over the plain; others are 
coming up the path, and I get glimpses of them here and there 
through the trees. 



7 j o'clock. 

We have arrived at a little house of refreshment, and now I have 
a table to write at, which I use for this purpose while the man who 
keeps the house is getting us some bread and cheese for a sort of 
breakfast. There is a large table in the room covered with orna- 
ments, minerals, boxes made of agate, engravings, and other things, 
to sell to tourists as souvenirs of their ascension. From the win- 
dow before me I can look down on the valley, and see the foaming 
Arve pouring through it over its stony bed. On each side of the 
stream is a broad belt of forest, and beyond the forest is a tract 
of green and fertile land, divided beautifully into square fields of 
grass and grain. 

' The place that we are in is in what would be called in America 
a settlement. It is at a place where there is a small tract of fer- 
tile land on a sort of knoll projecting from the side of the mount- 
ain. They have cleared the ground here, and laid out fields of 
corn and grain upon it, and it makes a very pretty place. It is 
high up above the valley ; there are only one or two houses upon 
it, and some barns. 

Now we are going to eat our bread and cheese. After that, and 
when we have rested a little, we shall resume our journey up the 
mountain. 



THE SEA OP ICE. 



67 



Conversation with Joseph. His mother's occupation. The moss. 

8 o'clock. 

We have ascended a mile more. After leaving the little chalet 
where we had our bread and cheese, we began to go on again by a 
steep path, in zigzags, up the mountain side, through the forest. 
From time to time we held conversation with our little guide. I 
asked him about his father. 

" I have no father," said he ; " my father is dead. I have no 
brothers or sisters, but only my mother. My mother and I are 
alone. " 

" And what does your mother do to gain her living?" 

I could not understand Joseph's answer to this question at first. 
He said that his mother gained her living by gathering or making 
something in the forest, but I could not tell what. He said he 
would show me when he got farther up the mountain. So, after 
we had ascended a little farther, he put up his hand under a little 
clump of fir-bushes, and took up a handful of the dead leaves, 
which he held up to me, saying that that was what it was his 
mother's business to gather. 

"But what do you use it for?" asked I. 

"For beds for the mules to lie upon," said he, "so as to keep 
them nice and clean for the travelers." 

Thus we see how many and how varied are the ways by which 
the visits of travelers to this valley furnish employment and the 
means of subsistence to the people. 

A short time after this we came to a little hut without any win- 
dows or chimneys. It was built under the trees, against the side 
of the mountain. I asked Joseph what it was for, and he said it 



68 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



Joseph has plenty of money. The lady on the carrying-chair. 

was a magazine to store the leaves in for the beds of the mules. 
He said that it was in such a hut as that that his mother stored 
her gatherings, on the other side of the valley. 

After ascending a little while, we saw a child in the path some 
way above us, with something in her hand. On coming up to 
her, we found she had a plate of strawberries, a bottle of milk, and 
a glass of water. We wanted the water. I took out my money, 
but found that I had no small change. J oseph said that he would 
make change for me ; so he drew out a long purse from his pock- 
et full of money. Thus it seemed that he was quite a thrifty 
young man. 



11 o'clock. 

From where I am seated now, I can see the path far below me, 
and the different parties coming up. They look very picturesque 
and pretty, winding around the turns of the zigzag, in long lines 
of mules and men. One lady, riding on what is called a carrying' 
chair,* has just gone by. This carrying-chair is a seat suspended 
between two poles, and carried by two men. Of course it makes, 
when a person is seated in it, quite a heavy load for the men, and 
they have to change pretty often ; for this reason, it is necessary to 
take four men, at least, and usually six, to each chair ; and then, 
after two of them have carried it a little way, two others take their 
place. This makes a very easy way for a lady to ascend a mount- 
ain, but it costs three times as much as it does to ride up on a 
mule. 

* CJiaise a porteur, 



THE SEA OP ICE. 



69 



The spring of water. Women and girls about it. Their eagerness. 

We have been going up, up, up, all the time now for hours, but 
we have always the same view of the valley, with its fields, and 
villages, and the torrents of the Arve below, and peaks and cliffs 
rising higher and higher above us. The valley seems scarcely to 
change in appearance at all as we ascend, except that the houses 
grow smaller, the lines of road become finer and finer, and the 
shading of color in the forests and fields becomes more and more 
delicate, until now, at length, the view resembles a finely-painted 
landscape in miniature on enamel. 

We just passed a place where there was a spring of water. I 
had a drinking-cup in my haversack, and we should have liked very 
well to have been allowed to help ourselves to the water at our 
pleasure; but the Swiss turn every thing to account on their 
mountains for the purpose of making money. There were no less 
than six women and girls around the spring, and when they saw 
us approaching, all came forward and formed a line across the 
road. They each had a large basket in their hands, stored with 
various refreshments. There were bottles of milk and of wine, 
plates of strawberries and raspberries, and glasses filled with wa- 
ter from the spring. The girls were dressed mostly in the Swiss 
costume, and wore broad-brimmed straw hats upon their heads. 
They behaved, on the whole, very politely, but they were all eager 
to have us buy something from their baskets. I addressed one of 
them, and asked for a glass of water, when they all immediately 
took up the tumblers from their baskets, and held them out so 
quick that they spilled half the water out of them. 

In front of the spring there was a long seat, made of a log with 



70 



THE SEA OP ICE. 



The mountaineer gathering moss. Still ascending. 

the upper side flattened. It was placed there for travelers to sit 
upon and rest ; but we like better to find resting-places for our- 
selves in more retired places among the rocks by the road-side as 
we go along. 

I just heard a clicking sound in the forest near me, and won- 
dered what it was. At first I thought it must be some animal 
there. I looked and watched, and at last I saw that it was a man. 
He was up near the top of a tall fir-tree. He was pulling off the 
moss from the branches of the tree, and throwing it down to the 
ground. This was what made the clicking sound. There was 
quite a heap of moss at the foot of the tree, which he had thrown 
down already. 

I wondered what he was doing this for. 

" Joseph, what is that man doing up in that tree ?" 

"He is gathering moss for the goats to live on in the win- 
ter." 

"Is it possible," said I, "that the goats can live on moss ?" 

" Yes, sir," said he ; " and the men come up here and gather it 
for them in the summer." 

The trees high up the mountain sides are usually loaded with 
moss, which hangs from all the branches in gray festoons, like a 
trimming. 



12 o'clock. 

Still up, up, up, twisting and turning every way among rocks, 
roots, crags, stumps, and every other possible obstacle. We are 
now, however, approaching the top. We are beginning to meet 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



71 



The carrying-chair coming down. Zigzag path up the Flegere. 

parties who have been up to the chalet,* and are coming down. 
The carrying-chair has just gone by. It is empty now, and the 
lady who rode up in it is walking down in company with the gen- 
tleman who is with her, the train of porters coming behind them. 
I can see other parties of men and mules descending; I can fol- 
low them with my eye far down the mountain. Sometimes they 
disappear for a time, and then come into view again at some new 
turn in the zigzags far below. 

I can see across the valley to the mountain range on the oppo- 
site side of it. The face of the mountain is all before me, with 
great fields of snow lying on the top of it. I seem to be about 
on a level with the lower limit of the snow. There is a small 
house, which I can just discern, that has been built as a shelter 
for tourists, who go up on that side for the sake of the view. The 
place is called Flegere. If you have any friends in America who 
have been at Chamouny, they will tell you that they heard of it. 
Perhaps they ascended to it : it is about as high as Montanvert, 
where we are going, only it is on the other side of the valley. I 
can trace the zigzag path which leads to it for a long distance up 
the mountain side, until, at last, it enters a forest and disappears. 
It comes out of the forest again a mile or two higher up, and from 
that point I can trace it again almost all the way to the summit. 

I have sent Joseph on to the inn to order breakfast for us. 
He says it is now only five minutes walk from here. I have re- 
mained behind on the rocks to finish my account of our ascension. 

A great many mules are continually going by. I think not 
* Pronounced shalky. 



72 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



View of the Sea of Ice. The inn on the mountain. The company. 

less than fifty people have passed by lis, going up the mountain, 
this morning. They go by us because I have stopped so much 
to write. They are sending the mules back because, I suppose, 
they prefer to walk down. The path is, indeed, very steep and 
rugged, and it often makes very short turns on the edge of a bare 
and stony slope, steeper than the roof of a house for a thousand 
feet down. 

Now I will go on to the inn, and see what success Joseph has 
met with in getting us breakfast. 

On the Sea of Ice, H o'clock. 
Just before arriving at the inn, I came over the brow of a hill 
which brought me suddenly into full view of the Sea of Ice. I 
saw before me and far below me an immense valley about three 
miles wide, bordered on each side with steep, rocky mountains, 
and filled from side to side with solid ice. The ice was not lev- 
el, but lay in hills and valleys, like the surface of uneven land, 
and great cascades were tumbling down the mountains on each side 
into it. 

The inn is a small building standing on a little level spot among 
the rocks, at a point which commands a fine view of the icy val- 
ley. Guides and mules were standing in the yard. I went in. 
There was a long passage-way, with a kitchen on one side and lit- 
tle bed-rooms on the other. These bed-rooms are for the use of 
such travelers as desire to spend the night on the mountain. 

At the end of the passage-way I came to a large room, where 
there were tables set, and people taking refreshments. At one of 



74 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



Curiosities for sale. Little mortar. The glacier. The moraines. 

the tables they were making ready for our breakfast. There was 
another large table in the room, covered with objects of science 
and art, to be sold to the visitors as souvenirs of their visit. 
There were rings, and pins, and bracelets, and jewelry of all kinds, 
made of the beautiful cornelians and agates found upon the sides 
of Mont Blanc and of the mountains around. There were cups, 
and trumpets, and cane-heads, and pipes, and various other things 
made of the horn of the chamois ; and there were carved images 
of animals and men, and models of Swiss houses and chalets, and 
a great many other such things. 

We ate our breakfast, and also bought some of the souvenirs. 
I bought a small mortar of smoke-colored agate, with a little pes- 
tle of the same. The mortar is about as large as the bottom of a 
tea-cup. If any of you ever come to see me, I will show it to you. 
At last we set out to descend to the Sea of Ice. 

The descent was by a zigzag path down the steep side of the 
mountain, several hundred feet. We met a great many parties of 
ladies and gentlemen coming and going. It was difficult getting 
upon the ice, for the margin of it was bordered by immense ridges 
of stones of all sizes, great and small. These ridges are called 
moraines. The glacier forms them by incessantly moving along, 
and carrying the stones which fall upon it from the mountains 
above with it, and strewing them along its borders as it goes on. 

It was very difficult to walk over the glacier when we were upon 
it. The ice is not level, but lies in hills, and valleys, and cliffs, 
and ravines, like a very rough and hilly country. It is, in fact, a 
country of ice. There are brooks on it, and cascades, and wa- 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



75 



Steps in the ice. The crevasses. The man with the little cannon. 

terfalls, and ponds, and stones, and gravel, and every thing, in 
fact, but vegetation. I am writing this account seated on a stone 
which lies upon the ice, with little streams of water running all 
around me. We have been ascending some of the little hills. 
The guide cut steps in the ice for us with his pike where it was 
very steep. Where it is not very steep we can walk pretty ea- 
sily, for the surface is not smooth and slippery, but rough, like the 
crust of snow in the spring. 

Here and there are immense chasms in the ice, several feet 
wide, and nobody knows how deep. We have been throwing big 
stones down into some of these chasms. The stones bound from 
side to side of the chasm, as they go down, with a hollow, reverb- 
erating sound, until at length they fall with a plunge into the wa- 
ter far below, as if they had fallen into the sea. 

The brooks and streams that are running on the glacier almost 
always find their way at last into one of these chasms. 

The sun shines warm upon me as I sit upon the rock, but the 
breeze is cold — so cold that I did not think it prudent for a lady 
to remain long exposed to it, and I accordingly sent Mary off the 
ice, under Joseph's care, some time ago, while I remained behind 
to finish my description, and now I will go too. 

There are two men on the highest ridge of rocks which border 
the glacier, with a little cannon and a fire. As I came by, one of 
them asked me if I would like to hear the report of a cannon for 
the echo. 

" How much will there be to pay?" 



76 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



A negotiation. View of a party crossing the glacier. 

"A franc." 

A franc is about twenty cents. 
" Would you like to hear it ?" 
" Why it seems to me that a franc is rather dear." 
" Ah no, sir. It costs full half a franc, the mere powder, for 
every charge. It is very far to bring up the powder." 
"Very well; fire." 

The man touched off his cannon by means of a little brand 
which he held at the end of a long pole. It made a loud report, 
and a prolonged echo followed it, reverberating from the mount- 
ains all around. 

Now the man is loading his cannon again as fast as he can. 
He sees another party coming down the rocks, and he hopes to get 
another franc for firing again. 

There is a party going across the glacier, with the intention of 
descending to Chamouny on the other side of the valley. We are 
watching them from the side of the mountain. We can see them 
with the glass as they go clambering over the hills and valleys of 
the ice. I am writing, and Mary is looking at them with the 
glass. I can not distinguish them with the naked eye, but she 
describes their progress. 

" Now they are going down an awful place. Now they are dis- 
appearing. The guide is leading the girl down by the hand. 
Now they are out of sight entirely." 

Where they are going when they get across I can not imagine. 
The whole side of the mountain there is in full view, with immense 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



77 



Watching the people on the glacier. The little bridge. 

cascades coming down for miles over the slopes of the rock, but I 
do not see any signs of a path in any direction. 
" Can you see them now ?" 

" No, I have lost them all now. I don't know what has become 
of them." 

Ten or fifteen minutes pass away. 

"Now I see one man. He is standing there alone ; he is very 
near the foot of one of the waterfalls. Can you see him ?" 

I look, without the glass, but I can see nothing. 

" Ah ! there is a bridge across the torrent. He is going over 
it ; now he is stopping in the middle of it. Look ! see if you 
can see him. Now he is stooping over. I wonder what he is 
doing." 

I look, and with the naked eye can see a tiny speck relieved 
against the white rocks. In a moment he is gone. 

"Ah! now I can see them all. Look! look!" 

I look, and can see them with the naked eye. They are slowly 
moving up over the gray rocks along the side of an immense cas- 
cade, formed by the water coming down a long slope of stones and 
gravel at the bottom of the descent. They move in a line, one 
behind the other. Now they are crossing the bridge, which seems 
to be only a single plank laid across the torrent. 

This man proves, at length, to belong to another party, that is 
coming up the valley on the other side, and is to cross over the 
glacier to this. The party that we had been watching had not 



78 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



Woman with refreshments to sell. Ladies on the glacier. 

gained the bank when we saw the man on the bridge. They had 
disappeared in some of the valleys or chasms of the glacier ; but 
now they have got across, and we can see both parties moving 
along toward each other, like lines of black dots slowly creeping 
over the gray rocks and gravel. 

The coming party have stopped to rest. There is a woman 
there with a basket ; I suppose she has refreshments to sell. We 
can see the basket with the glass, but can not see whether the 
people buy any thing of her. At any rate, they are sitting down 
at the place. 

Now they are moving again. They appear and disappear from 
time to time among the cliffs and pinnacles of ice, and the heaps 
of rocks formed by the moraines. 

Now I can see them, with the glass, moving slowly along on 
the brink of a range of icy cliffs ; they have stopped to look down. 
One of the guides has just thrown a stone down into the abyss 
below. 

Now the guide is cutting steps in the ice up a steep ascent. 
There are several ladies in the party ; they come along very cau- 
tiously; in some places the guides take hold of their hands. 
They are advancing gradually across the glacier, but it will be 
nearly half an hour before they reach this side. Now the guide is 
holding one of the ladies while she is looking down into one of the 
chasms. It seems to be an awful abyss. The others are looking 
down too. Now they are throwing stones down. 

They approach the brink of the abyss with great caution, and 
seem very much afraid that they may fall in. 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



79 



Parties coming down. Steep path. The mules. 

8 o'clock. 

We have returned to the hotel. We arrived about seven 
o'clock, after a descent of about three hours. By coming faster 
we might have descended in about two hours, but we preferred to 
come slowly, and to stop occasionally by the way. We were con- 
tinually meeting with little scenes and incidents, which so amused 
and occupied our minds that we were by no means impatient to 
come to the end of our journey. 

We met several parties coming up. Other parties overtook and 
passed us coming down. Some of these consisted of young men, 
who descended with great rapidity, cutting across at the turns of 
the zigzags so as to save distance. In so doing, they were obliged 
to scramble down very rough and deep declivities by a succession 
of leaps from one rock to another, but this they seemed to enjoy. 
Other parties consisted of ladies, who went more slowly. Some 
of them kept upon their mules, and went on their way down the 
steep turns and windings of the path apparently with the most 
perfect composure and unconcern. Others were afraid to ride 
down, and so, while their guides led their mules, they walked be- 
hind, descending cautiously by the help of their pike-staves. 
There is not really much danger in coming down upon the mules, 
for they are very careful and very sure-footed ; and when they 
come to a steep or very uneven place, they look attentively at the 
ground, and take care where they step, and so carry you over the 
bad place very gently and safely. Still, they do sometimes trip 
a little, or their foot slips over a rolling stone ; and if this happens 
near the brink of a precipice, the rider is often greatly alarmed, 




COMING DOWN. 



THE SEA OP ICE. 



81 



Moving on the brink of the precipice. The big bundle of moss. 

and insists on getting off and walking the rest of the way, though 
the guide earnestly assures him that there is no danger. 

There are many places where the path passes along the brink 
of a precipice, and sometimes turns round a projecting point, in a 
manner that tries the nerves of timid people very much. There 
was one such place, which I stopped to make a little sketch of in 
coming down from Montanvert, sufficient to enable me to describe 
it to Mr. Doepler, so that he could make a drawing of it to put in 
the book opposite to this description. It was a place where the 
road passed round a great stump at a projecting point on the 
mountain side.* 

In coming down such places, you feel much safer than you oth- 
erwise would do on account of the care and attention of the guide. 
He comes forward to lead the mule by the bridle, and thus, even 
in case of a fall, he would be ready to catch you, and save you 
from being hurt. 

When we came down to the place where we had seen the man 
at work gathering moss from the trees, we found him there again, 
though he had finished his gathering, and was now making up his 
moss into a bale. He had placed sticks along the sides of the 
bundle of moss, and then had tied strings around it. He thus 
formed quite a compact package, and presently he put the burden 
on his head, and walked down the mountain with it. 

* Mr. Doepler has made the picture, and you see it on the adjoining page. You 
see the mule coming down round the projecting point in the foreground above. 
Farther on, and lower down the mountain, you see the continuation of the path, 
with the short cuts leading from the point of one zigzag to that of the other below it. 
20 F 



82 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



The evening sun. The old guide. His serpentine cups. 

The sun shone upon our path and made it warm for us at 
times, but we saw, some miles below us, the shadow of the mount- 
ains on the other side of the valley gradually creeping up the 
slope on our side as the sun declined. The valley itself was now 
wholly in shadow, the sun, to the people there, having some time 
since gone down. So we walked on to meet the shadow coming 
up, and we watched with pleasure the gradual advance of it from 
rock to rock, and from tree to tree, up the mountain side. At last 
we found ourselves on the verge of the shadow, and, looking across 
the valley, we saw the sun just going down there behind the lofty 
horizon. 

When we had descended to within a mile or two of the valley, 
we began to come to chalets and pasturages. The children were 
there driving home the cows, and we could hear the tinkling of 
the bells, coming to us from a great distance all around, through 
the still evening air. 

Near the bottom of the descent we came to a place where an 
old man was sitting at the door of his cabin. It was a rude cab- 
in, standing all by itself in a solitary place by the road-side. 
Near the door stood a little table, on which were placed some lit- 
tle cups formed of a sort of green stone called serpentine. The 
old man wished us to buy some of them. 

So we stopped to look at them. They were pretty little cups. 
The color of the stone was green, variegated with brown and yel- 
low. They were very cheap, too ; some were a franc, and oth- 
ers, smaller, only half a franc each. Half a franc — which is only 
ten cents — for a cup of real stone is very little. Those that were 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



83 



Properties of serpentine. The old man's lathe. Conversation with him. 

a franc were about as large as the little agate mortar which I 
had bought on the mountain, and the price of that was twelve 
francs. 

The reason of this difference is, that serpentine is a very soft 
stone — so soft that it can be sawed with a common saw, or cut with 
a chisel, or turned in a lathe. Agate, on the other hand, is ex- 
cessively hard ; it is like flint ; and thus to cut it into the shape 
of a cup or a mortar requires a great deal of labor and skill. 

We bought two of the cups, one of the large ones and one of 
the small ones, and, while we were paying for them, we asked the 
old man whether he made them himself. He said he did ; he 
turned them in a lathe. 

" And if you will walk in a moment," he added, " into my cab- 
in, I will show you the lathe." 

So we went in. We found that he had a very good lathe to 
work with, though the cabin itself was very small, and very dark 
and confined. 

The old man said that the stone was very easy to work, but 
that they had to go a great way to get it. I asked him where 
they got it, and he said on the mountain, three quarters of an hour 
above Montanvert. 

They always measure distances in Switzerland by time. An 
hour, in distance, is as much as can be traveled in an hour. Of 
course, how far you can go in an hour depends on circumstances, 
such as whether, if it is on a mountain, you are going up or com- 
ing down ; and if it is on a public road, whether you are going on 
foot or in a carriage. Accordingly, in such cases, when you ask 



84 



THE SEA OF ICE. 



Way of reckoning distances in Switzerland. 

how far it is, they sometimes give you a double answer. For ex- 
ample : 

"What distance, guide, is Montanvert from Chamouny?" 
" Two hours and a half, sir, to go up, and short two hours to 
come down." 
Or, 

" How far is it from Chamouny, down the valley, to Sallen- 

ches?" 

" On foot, sir, it is four hours ; in a carriage it is three." 

The old man told us that for forty years he was a guide to con- 
duct tourists up and down the mountains around Chamouny, but 
that now he was too old. He was eighty-four, he said. His 
health and his appetite were still perfectly good, but his eyes and 
his limbs had failed him, so that he could climb the mountains no 
more. 

After talking with him a little while we bade him good-by and 
returned to the inn. 

As we approached the village, we saw on all the roads converg- 
ing toward it little parties, some on foot and some mounted on 
mules, returning slowly home from the various excursions which 
they had been making during the day, and at the doors of the 
hotels carriages were arriving, bringing up fresh supplies of tour- 
ists from the valley below. The faces of these new-comers beamed 
with an expression of wondering excitement as they stood on the 
door-steps of the hotels and surveyed the stupendous scenes around 
them. 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



85 



The Valley of the Rhone. Old Black Head. Reason of the name. 



LETTER VI. 

OLD BLACK HEAD. 

Martigny, Aug. 23. 

We have left the Valley of Chamouny, having come over, two 
days ago, to another valley, called the Valley of the Rhone, by a 
wild pass which leads over and through the mountains, from the 
head of the Valley of Chamouny to a large town called Martigny, 
which lies at the foot of the mountains in the heart of another 
valley — the Valley of the Rhone. The Valley of the Rhone is the 
great central valley of Switzerland. The pass leading into it from 
the head of the Valley of Chamouny is called the Pass of the Tete 
JSFoire.* This is a French word, which might be translated Old 
Black Head. 

The black head referred to in the name is a great mountain 
promontory, with a round and very dark head. The darkness of 
it is owing to the forests of firs, and pines, and other trees — form- 
ing what in America is called a black growth — which clothe it. 
The path which we travel goes for some miles along the side of 
this black head, half way between the heavens and the earth — 
that is, with the mountain rising one thousand feet above the path, 
and falling on the other side by an almost perpendicular descent, 
near a thousand feet below ; and this is the reason why the pass 
is called by the name of Tete Noire. 

* Pronounced Tait Nooaire. 



86 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



The char road. The inn. Long descent to Martigny. 

The path is about twenty miles long. For a part of the way 
— that is, for about six miles — there is a sort of a cart-road, or, as 
they call it here, a char* road, because char a bancs can travel 
over it. Then, for several miles more, the road ascends, until we 
come to what is considered the middle of the pass, where there is 
an inn standing all alone on the brink of an immense roaring ra- 
vine, in the midst of black forests, and of rocks and precipices still 
blacker. From this inn or hotel, for it is quite a large and com- 
fortable house, the road is almost all the way a steep declivity into 
the valley of the Rhone. For six miles there is a continuous de- 
scent, as steep as a horse can walk, from the summit of the pass 
down to the level of the Rhone, and without any zigzags. In- 
deed, the road is so straight, that the valley and the town that you 
are coming down to are in full view all the way. In the winter, 
if there was snow on the ground, and a good track worn, a boy 
might come down the whole six miles at one coasting, if he dared 
to coast so far down so steep a hill. The perpendicular descent 
is nearly five thousand feet. 

The reason why this descent is so great is, that the valley of 
the Rhone lies a great deal lower than the Valley of Chamouny. 
Chamouny, indeed, lies very high. It is among the glaciers, and 
almost up to the snow ; but the Valley of the Rhone at Martigny 
lies very nearly on the level of the Lake of Geneva. We ascend 
about two thousand feet to get up from Chamouny to the highest 
point of the pass ; and then, in going down on the other side, we 
have to descend, as I said before, about five thousando 

* Pronounced shar. 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



87 



Setting out from Chamouny. Scene at the hotel. The mules. 

It is disagreeable going down steep descents on mules, espe- 
cially when the way is long; so we concluded, in forming our 
plan for the journey, that we would go in a char as far as the road 
would allow, and then proceed on mules to the hotel, and from the 
hotel walk down the six-mile hill into the valley. 

On leaving the inn at Chamouny, therefore, we started with 
quite a cavalcade. There was one mule loaded with baggage; 
then came the two mules that we were to ride, ready saddled and 
bridled for us ; finally, we followed ourselves in our chair. And 
so we had four mules, three guides, and a chair. 

It was a bright and pleasant morning, and we set out very early. 
The rising sun was just gilding the snows on the summit of Mont 
Blanc and of the neighboring mountains. Many other parties 
were starting at the same time. Some were in the breakfast-room 
drinking their coffee ; others were mounting their mules, or, hav- 
ing already mounted, were just riding away from the door. All 
was bustle and excitement, and every mind was filled with pleasur- 
able anticipations in looking forward to the adventures of the day. 

The two mules that were to take us up the steep part of the 
pass went on before us, under the charge of the guide. The third 
stood patiently at the door, with the trunks and baggage loaded 
on his back ; he was to follow. We ourselves got into the char 
a banc and drove away. Our pike-staves were placed along the 
side of the char a banc, at the top, and secured there by the cur- 
tain-straps. 

Thus we set off and drove up the valley. The road led pleas- 
antly along the banks of the torrent of the Arve. The turbid wa- 



88 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



View of the mountains. The cascades. The road grows steep and narrow. 

ter in it was shooting very swiftly along the bed of the stream, 
and flowing here and there into various artificial channels which 
had been made for it for the purpose of watering the land or turn- 
ing mills. Along the road were great flocks of goats, filling the 
morning air with the tinkling of their innumerable bells. Chil- 
dren were driving these goats to their pastures on the mountain 
side. 

These mountain sides were displayed fully before us for many 
miles up and down the valley. In some places they presented 
green slopes of pasture-land to view, with scattered chalets here 
and there — some at a vast elevation ; at others they were clothed 
with the dark evergreen forests. Here and there the slopes were 
marked with furrows formed by the winter avalanches, or the tor- 
rents produced by the summer showers. There were also long 
cascades, which came for many miles down the mountain side in 
little zigzags, that glittered in the morning light so brightly, as we 
looked up at them from below, that they resembled white chain- 
lightning in a green sky. 

As we went on, the country became more and more wild. We 
passed by the lower termination of two enormous glaciers, that came 
crowding down into the valley from the mountains above, and we 
watched the torrents of water that issued from the chasms at the 
foot of them. The road at length grew so narrow and steep that 
we could not go any farther in the carriage. So we stopped at an 
inn in a small village at the foot of one of the glaciers, and changed 
from the char a banc to the mules, which we found waiting there 
for us. The char a banc then went back to Chamouny. 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



89 



Showing the passport* Carefulness of the mules. Little bridges. 

This place was near the confines of Switzerland and Sardinia, 
and so, in order to be allowed to pass from one country to anoth- 
er, we had to show our passports. The village was very small. 
It consisted of a few houses, all close together, so it was not dif- 
ficult to find the passport office ; indeed, I did not go to the office 
at all, but gave my passport to a soldier who was standing in the 
middle of the street. He looked at it, and said it was all very 
well. This was the last place in Sardinia. 

When we had mounted our mules, the guide took his place at 
the head of the one that carried the lady, and walked on, ready to 
take hold of the bridle whenever we should come to any difficult 
places. I followed. The road was narrow and tip-hill, so that 
we had to walk the mules all the way. 

The valley grew more and more contracted, and the scenery be- 
came more wild the farther we went on. The road, too, became 
a mere path. It crossed several furious little streams, over narrow 
plank bridges without any railing. In such cases as these, the 
guide would take the lady's mule by the bridle and lead him care- 
fully over. I would follow, letting my mule take his own way. 
He would look down attentively at the planks of the bridge, and 
choose his way over them with great discrimination, never step- 
ping on a crevice or a weak place, or any part which, for any rea- 
son whatever, presented a suspicious appearance. 

There were houses here and there along the way, but the peo- 
ple looked very poor. In one place, in a small hamlet that we 
passed through, there was a poor child, sick and deformed, lying 
on a bed on the ground, in the street in front of the cabin where 



90 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



The poor sick boy. Good place to get a drink. • Contribution-box. 

he lived. His little sister was seated on the ground by his side, 
taking care of him. She was knitting at the same time. The 
street was so narrow that there was barely room for the child to 
lie between the mountain-path and the cabin. I suppose they 
brought him out there partly to amuse him by letting him see 
what passed by, and partly in hopes that some of the travelers 
might give him some money. 

At another place, where we were going down into a wild and ro- 
mantic gorge, we came to a place where there was a stream of wa- 
ter flowing from a spout in an aqueduct that had been set in the 
ground by the road-side. There was a reservoir under the spout 
to hold water for the mules. For the travelers themselves there 
was a tumbler on a little shelf fastened to the side of the aque- 
duct, and near it Was an inscription neatly painted on the board. 
The inscription was substantially as follows : 

This fountain of very cool and pure water is opened for the re- 
freshment of travelers who come this way. Below is a box to re- 
ceive the contributions of those who are disposed to remember the 
constructor of it. 

We drank of the fountain, and found the water very excellent. 
I put a small coin through the chink in the top of the box, and 
then we rode on. 

The path now grew more and more rough and narrow, and the 
valley became a mere mountain gorge. It passed often midway 
along the steep slope of a hill, with awful precipices above and be- 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



91 



The mules on the brink of the precipice. Farewell to Mont Blanc. 

low us ; and often, in such places, it would wind round sharp 
curves at the foot of a projecting rock, with an almost perpendicu- 
lar descent on the other side, leading to the rocky bed of the roar- 
ing torrent hundreds of feet below. Still, the mules seem so steady 
and careful that you would scarcely feel any fear in these cases, 
were it not that they sometimes stop to kick or bite off the flies, 
and it always seems to you that they make it a point to choose 
the worst and most dangerous places for this manoeuvre. Some- 
times, when you are just on the verge of such an awful gulf, and 
have braced up your nerves to sit quietly till you have gone by, 
imagining that it will be but a moment, the mule suddenly stops 
on the very brink, and, reaching his head round as far as he can, 
he twists his body so as to bring the fly within reach, until it 
seems to you that he must certainly topple over. In the mean 
time you sit still, holding your breath, and not daring to move, 
for it seems to you that if you were to jerk the rein, or touch the 
whip, or do any thing else to urge him on, you would certainly 
make him topple over. 

After we had been journeying on in this way for some time, the 
guide stopped the mule that he was leading, and turned its head 
round, so that Mary could look down the valley. 

" There," said he, " is your last view of Mont Blanc. We lose 
sight of it very soon, and see it no more." 

So we both looked. We could see far down the valley, and 
through an opening between the nearer mountains we beheld the 
great white dome of Mont Blanc, surrounded by a group of lower 
summits, all incrusted with a dazzling coating of ice and snow. 



92 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



The pass of the Tete Noire. Romantic road. The view. 

We took one good look at the hoary-headed monarch, and then 
bade hirn farewell. We shall see him no more for many days. 
He will be hidden by the nearer mountains. But after we have 
finished our wanderings in Switzerland, and shall return to France, 
and have gone a hundred miles away, we shall see his white and 
glittering head rising again into the sky, when all the lower mount- 
ains that are now about to cover and hide him shall have entirely 
disappeared. 

After bidding farewell to Mont Blanc, our path entered a wind- 
ing gorge, which soon became inexpressibly grand and sublime. 
The path lay along the mountain side, midway between the sum- 
mit above and a ravine, eight hundred feet deep, below, down into 
which we looked as we rode along as you would look over the 
parapet on a steeple down into a street of the town. 

To form a clear idea of this road, look at the steeple of the 
church in your town, and ask your father how high it is. If he 
says it is about one hundred feet high, which is perhaps the aver- 
age height of steeples in America, then imagine eight such steeples 
one on top of the other, and a precipice of rocks, almost perpendic- 
ular, at that height. At the top of this precipice is a narrow road 
in the sky, and you are riding along it, mounted on a mule, and 
looking down, from time to time, over the brink into the valley be- 
low. Above and beyond the path is a steep hill, covered with for- 
ests, which rises twice or three times as high as the precipice de- 
scends. Along this narrow path you travel for miles. You are 
shaded by the mountain and the forest on one side of you, and 
you look down into the narrow valley on the other, and you see 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



93 



Looking down. The promontory of the Tete Noire. A sketch. 

the torrent foaming over the rocks at the bottom, though it is so 
far down that the sound of it is scarcely to be heard at all. 

At one place where I looked over there was a broad shelf of 
fertile land about half way down, where I saw green fields, and 
orchards, and farm-houses. I looked down upon them as if I had 
been in a balloon. They were four hundred feet below me, and 
all the objects looked so small, and the color and shading was 
made to appear so delicate by the distance, that it seemed like a 
beautiful landscape reflected in a convex glass, or painted exquis- 
itely in miniature. 

The mountain which we were passing round in this manner, 
midway between its summit and its base, was the Old Black 
Head from which the pass is named, or the Tete JYoire, if you 
prefer the French name. It is of the form of a mighty promon- 
tory, and when we reached the very wildest and sublimest part of 
it, we came to the hotel. Just before we arrived at the hotel the 
rocks projected so far as to overhang the chasm below, and it was 
necessary to make a tunnel through them for the pathway ; and 
even at the end of the tunnel there was no room for the paths, for 
the rocks were perpendicular there, and, accordingly, a narrow 
platform was made against the face of the rock, with a little rail- 
ing on the outside of it. On this the mules walked along till 
they came at length to a place where they once more could have 
solid footing. As soon as we were settled at the hotel, I walked 
back down the road to this place again, and made a little drawing 
of it as I sat on the rocks, so that Mr. Doepler might make a pic- 
ture to insert here, that you may see exactly what sort of a place 




THE GALLERY OF THE TETE NOIRE. 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



95 



The inn. Scenes in the interior. The mules. 

it was. I took pains to make the proportions of the drawing as 
exact as possible. 

The inn was quite a large and handsome building, though it 
was crowded in among the rocks in the wildest and most savage 
place imaginable. There was barely room for it between the 
road and the brink of the abyss. Still, wild and solitary as it 
was, it presented a scene full of bustle and excitement. A num- 
ber of mules were standing at the door. Some had just arrived, 
and the lady and gentleman tourists whom they had brought were 
dismounting. Others were just going away again, and their riders 
were getting adjusted in their saddles. Within the house were sev- 
eral large rooms filled with tables, where various parties were din- 
ing. At one was seated a father and his daughters ; at another, 
a joyous group of young men ; at a third, a teacher and his pupils ; 
and at a fourth, perhaps a bridegroom and bride, who were mak- 
ing their wedding tour. The chairs and sofas were piled up with 
knapsacks, haversacks, traveling bags, and shawls ; and at every 
corner of the rooms, and at all the windows, there were pike-staves 
and canes standing up, with hats, caps, and bonnets on the tops 
of them. In a word, the interior view of the hotel presented a 
very busy and animated scene. 

We dismissed our mules here, for, with the exception of one as- 
cent, we were at the summit of the pass, and we preferred to walk 
down on the other side. The baggage mule, of course, went on. 
We told the guide who had charge of that mule that he need not 
wait for us ; he might go on, we said, as fast as he pleased, and 
when he arrived at Martigny he was to engage us a good room, 



96 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



Question about finding the way to Martigny alone. 

and have the baggage put into it. We should come along slowly, 
we said, and perhaps it would be night before we should arrive. 

"Oh no," said he, "you will arrive long before night. It is 
only three hours." 

" Well," said I, " we will see." 

I asked a gentleman who sat at a table near us while we were 
eating our dinner if there was any difficulty in finding the way to 
Martigny without a guide. He said that there might be some, for 
it was only a mountain road, and there were a great many differ- 
ent mountain roads leading off from it. However, we had no fear, 
for we knew that the road that we were to travel was the most 
frequented, and that all the branch roads would be smaller. Be- 
sides, there were so many parties going and coming all the time, 
that if, at any place, we should chance to be at a loss in respect 
to the way, we knew very well that if we were to sit down there 
on a rock for a little while, some party of tourists would be sure 
to come along the road, one way or the other, within a very short 
time, and that we could learn the way from them. 

In addition to this, there is another consideration which applies 
to traveling among the Alps, which is of great importance in re- 
spect to finding the way, and that is that the features of the coun- 
try are on so grand a scale, and the mountains and valleys that 
diversify the surface are are so enormous in magnitude, that you 
can almost always find your road from one place to another sim- 
ply by what, in America, is called the lay of the land. Indeed, 
you can often see in the morning the whole expanse of country 
before you that you are going to travel over in the journey of the 



OLD BLACK HEAL). 



97 



Extended views enjoyed while traveling in Switzerland. 

day, and, with a good glass, can discern the town where the jour- 
ney is to end. So it often happens that a party, after having been 
traveling many hours, stop at some turn in the road and look back 
to see where they have been coming. 

"There," they say, pointing back down the valley, and to the 
other side of it, " there is the village that we set out from. Do 
you see the church, and the castle on the hill behind it ? We 
came along that road that lies by the bank of the river, and there 
is the bridge that we crossed, and there, at the foot of that spur 
of the mountains, is the village where we stopped to dine." 

And, even in cases where we can not see the end of the journey 
from the beginning, we can always look at a model of the country 
— for we find these models at almost all the principal inns — : and 
see exactly through what region we are to go. The hills and val- 
leys are all laid down, and the track marked among them. By 
means of one of these models we had learned, in this case, exactly 
where we were to go after leaving our inn. We were to wind 
round the brow of Old Black Head for a mile or two more ; then 
we were to cross a stream at a village, and go up a high hill by 
zigzags. This hill, measured by the length of the road ascending 
it, was about two miles high. At the top of it we should be at the 
summit of the pass, and then, for the most of the way, we had a 
straight road down the bed of a long valley for six miles more, with 
the town of Martigny, where we were to go, in plain sight all the 
way. So we had little fear of getting lost in making the journey 
without a guide. 

The guide accordingly went on with the baggage-mule, and we, 



98 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



Field of immense boulders. Coolness of the forest. 

after we had dined and rested ourselves sufficiently, set out to fol- 
low him. We sauntered slowly along, with our pike-staves in our 
hands, and soon plunged into a forest-scene that greatly excited 
our wonder and admiration. The whole surface of the ground 
seemed to consist of immense rocks, that had fallen down, appar- 
ently, in some former age, from the summit of the mountain, two 
or three thousand feet above us. These rocks were many of them 
as big as houses, with smaller ones intermixed. They formed the 
whole mountain side above and below us, as far as we could see. 
They had lain so long in their present position that they had be- 
come covered with a very thick coat of the richest and softest 
moss. This moss was variegated with all the shades of green and 
brown, and was inexpressibly beautiful. In addition to the moss, 
trees of evergreen had sprung up upon and among the rocks, and 
had grown to a great size, so that they formed a very dark and 
dense forest, which shaded the moss, and made it grow more lux- 
uriantly than ever. 

We walked along for half an hour through this scene, enjoying 
all the time the refreshing coolness of the forest, and wondering at 
the enormous magnitude of the fallen rocks. Presently we came 
to a place where the side of the mountain was smoother, and here 
men were cutting timber far above our heads, with a view of slid- 
ing the logs down the mountain side to the mills in the valleys be- 
low. At last we arrived at the village in the valley where we 
were to bid Old Black Head farewell, and here, crossing the stream, 
we prepared to ascend a high hill. We had seen the hill for some 
time, with the zigzag path leading up the side of it, precisely as 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



99 



A col. View from the summit. A good seat. 

they had been represented in the model. It was a long mountain 
range rising into lofty peaks above. The zigzag path led up to a 
sort of hollow or sag in the top of the mountain, where it was com- 
paratively easy to go over. Such a hollow in a mountain range 
is called, in Switzerland, a col. The name of this one was the Col 
of Forclaz. We could look up to this col from the village, and 
see the zigzag path leading up to it, with mules here and there 
coming down. We could also see a house at the top, which looked 
like a house of refreshment for travelers, though it was so far off 
and so high up that we could not distinguish it very well. 

It took us an hour to go up the mountain side to the col. This 
was because we stopped often to rest, and to look down into the 
valley and enjoy the views. Of course, the village was below us, 
almost at our feet, and Old Black Head opposite on the other side 
of the valley. Farther down were the frightful gorges, along the 
sides of which we had been traveling, and mountains covered with 
snow rising to the horizon beyond. 

When we got pretty near the top of the ascent, we came to a 
very pleasant shady place under the trees, where we wished to 
stop again and rest. There was a good log, too, by the road-side, 
to sit upon. A little beyond the log we saw a beggar-man sit- 
ting upon a stone. He seemed to be blind, and he had a little girl 
with him. 

"Here is a good seat," said I, "for us to sit down and rest; 
and we will give a little money to this beggar-man, so that we can 
sit here in peace and comfort." 

I am becoming more and more convinced that it is not best gen- 



100 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



Conversation with the child about the old blind man. 

erally to give to public beggars in Switzerland any more than any 
where else, but I do it sometimes from a sort of selfish motive, as 
I was going to do now. 

Still, I could not help pitying the poor man in this case, he look- 
ed so blind ; and the little girl, too, who sat by his side. 

He rose when he heard us coming nigh to the place, and stood, 
tottering, with his hat held out in his hand. 

" Sit down, my good man," said I; "we will give you some- 
thing. You can sit down, and the little girl will come and bring 
it to you." 

So the old man sat down again, and the girl came to us. 
"Is your father blind?" 

"Yes, madame," said the child, "he is quite blind." 
" How came he to be blind ?" 

"It came from a great headache that he had," said the child. 

We gave the child a coin which was worth about two cents. 
She carried it back to her father. She put it into his hand, and, 
while he was feeling of it to ascertain what it was worth, she 
whispered to him, 

"Twenty centimes." 

The blind man was greatly pleased to find what a munificent 
donation we had made him. It might have been only one cen- 
time. He rose from his seat, took off his hat, and bowed, and 
seemed extremely grateful. 

After sitting in this resting-place a little while, we rose, and, 
bidding the old blind man and his child good day, we went on. 

We soon came to the top of the ascent, and thus reached the 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



101 



House of refreshment. Passport again. Conversation with the officer. 

col. Here there were several chalets, though the place is too high 
to be inhabited, except for a short time in the summer. 

The first house was the little place of refreshment which we 
had seen in looking up from below. We went in. There was a 
Swiss peasant-girl there to wait upon the company. She gave us 
some foaming lemonade, and we sat at a table overlooking the val- 
ley for half an hour, resting, and drinking our lemonade, and talk- 
ing with the peasant-girl about the country and the mountains 
around. 

" Do you sleep up here?" 

" No, madame ; I sleep below, on the mountain side." 

After remaining at this lofty little saloon till we were entirely 
rested, we walked on. We soon came to another small building 
where there was a soldier. This proved to be the first Swiss post, 
and here we had to show our passport again. The soldier and his 
wife were the only persons here. They kept refreshments for sale 
too, and seemed a little disappointed that we had taken all that we 
wanted at the other place. 

When the soldier opened my passport, he seemed much pleased 
to find that I was an American. He asked where I lived. I told 
him in New York. He seemed still more pleased to hear this, 
and said that he had a brother in America, who lived at a place 
very near New York, called Wisconsin ! 

After talking thus a little while with the soldier and his wife, 
seated on a wooden bench in front of their cabin door, we bade 
them good-by and went on. We were now at a vast elevation, 
almost up to the region of perpetual snow. Indeed, there were 



102 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



The valley comes into view. Level land and straight roads. 

patches of snow lying on the mountain sides all around us, and 
very little above our level. We were, however, now soon to com- 
mence the descent. We were going down into what is known as 
the great central valley of Switzerland, the Valley of the Rhone. 
This valley lies very low, being almost on the level of the Lake 
of Geneva, and it is bordered on both sides by an immense extent 
of mountainous country from twenty to sixty miles wide. The 
valley is very long, and the bottom of it is quite smooth and level, 
though the mountains rise very suddenly and precipitously along 
the borders of it. We had obtained a very correct idea of the 
situation, extent, and character of this valley from the models that 
we had seen, and now we knew that we should soon come in sight 
of it. 

According to our expectations, the valley soon began to open to 
view, and in a short time we saw it wholly displayed before us. 
We saw the bottom of it, which formed a wide plain of fields and 
meadows, and the long ranges of rock and mountain that hemmed 
it in on both sides like walls. We saw the towns scattered along 
the margin of it, and the roads, like white lines, that stretched 
across it. So level was the land in the bottom of this valley, that 
the great road to Italy, which passes through it, was, for about six 
miles, as straight as an arrow. -It had the appearance, as we look- 
ed down upon it, of a white line drawn through the green and level 
plain. Near the foot of the long slope that we were now about to 
descend, and just at the margin of the valley, was Martigny, the 
town where our journey was to end. 

So we began to descend. It was down, down, down, as steep 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



103 



The pasturages and villages of barns. Use of these barns. 

as we could walk. Indeed, we had to put forward our pike-staves 
at every step, and plant them among the stones, to hold back with 
and prevent ourselves from going too fast. 

Although we were so high, we were still in a valley, and there 
were lofty mountains on each side of us, rising to a great eleva- 
tion. The sides of these mountains were formed of green pastur- 
ages, and along the road, as we descended, we came continually to 
villages of barns ! These villages of barns are peculiar to Switz- 
erland, and they are very curious. They are built on the higher 
Alps, where it is too cold for people to live, but where the grass 
grows rich and green on the mountain slopes for two or three 
months in the year. In these places they pasture the cows during 
the summer months, and drive them down into the lower valley 
again in the fall. While they are up on the mountains, there are 
a few people that remain with them, to milk them morning and 
evening, and to make the butter and cheese. For this purpose 
they have little villages of barns, or, rather, of cow-houses, where 
the cows all come at night, and then are sent out again up the 
mountain sides in the morning. These cow-houses are small, for 
they are not used, like the barns in America, to keep hay in for the 
winter, but only to keep the cows in during the summer nights, 
and also to make the butter and cheese. There is also, in each one, 
some little cuddy on a loft, where the man can sleep who milks 
the cows. 

These cow-houses look like small log cabins, with great roofs 
overhanging the eaves. They are made, in fact, of small square 
timbers notched together at the corners, and are covered with very 



104 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



The interior of one of the buildings. Queer place for the bed. Still descending. 

thick and coarse shingles, kept down by heavy stones. If you 
look at almost any "book of views in Switzerland, you will see pic- 
tures of these little cabins, with rows of stones on the roof to keep 
the shingles from blowing away. 

The interior of these chalets is very curious. There is one 
room for the cows, with little stalls to tie them up. There is an- 
other room for the pans of milk, and the churn, and the cheese- 
press. Then there is a ladder to climb up to a place under the 
roof, where the man sleeps. His bed is laid directly on the floor. 
They have models of these chalets to sell in the little shops in 
Switzerland where such things are kept. We have bought sever- 
al of these models at different times, and brought them to this 
country. 

We went on down, down, down, passing one of these little cow- 
towns after another, but still not coming to any inhabited village. 
We know the cow-houses at once by there being no windows to 
them, except one or two small openings on one side, and no chim- 
neys. It looks queer to see a whole village of huts without any 
windows or chimneys to any of them. The position of the huts 
is singular too, for they are almost always built against the steep 
side of the mountain, so that while the front is higher than a man's 
head, on the back side the roof almost touches the ground. 

At one of these hamlets we saw a young-looking woman with 
a child. The child was playing about the grass, and the woman 
was watching her, employing her hands in the mean time in knit- 
ting. The Swiss girls and women seem to be always knitting 
when they are not otherwise employed. They knit when they are 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



105 



We give the child some bonbons. Remarkable view of the valley. 

walking along the road ; they knit on the top of hay-carts when 
they are coming home from their day's work, and they knit riding 
along the road on the backs of mules or donkeys, sitting on a pack- 
saddle or on the animal's back, with their bare feet hanging down 
together at the side. 

We stopped a few minutes to talk with this woman, and to give 
some bonbons to the child. The woman seemed to be very much 
pleased, and she tried to make the child say Thank you, madame ; 
but the little rogue was too much occupied with eating the bon- 
bons to stop to talk about them, and so his mother thanked us in- 
stead. 

We still went on down, down, down, as steep as we could go. 
We walked slowly, and stopped often to rest, and parties of tour- 
ists — some walking, and some riding on mules — passed us from 
time to time on their way to Martigny. As we descended, we 
came to one little hamlet of cow-houses after another, but we were 
yet far too high for any inhabited village. The valley was still all 
the time in full view ; the same long roads, the same villages, the 
same shining and winding reaches of the river were all the time to 
be seen. We had been coming down now for more than an hour, 
and yet we seemed no nearer to the valley than we were when it 
first came into view. 

Still down, down, down. After passing several chalets, we 
came to one near which there was a pretty brook by the side of 
the road, where a path branched off another way. There was a 
peasant-girl there, about ten years old, at work. She had been 
washing some clothes, and was now rinsing them in the brook. 



106 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



Girl working by the road-side. Two children making a water-course. 

We went to her and gave her some of the bonbons. We put them 
on a stone before her, because her hands were wet, and she could 
not take them ; but she wiped her hands immediately, and took 
them to put them away. She looked very much astonished and 
very much pleased. We thought that there would be no harm in 
giving something to her, for she was not begging ; she was at work 
industri usly to help her father, I suppose, who was probably at 
that chalet taking care of the cows. 

We went on down the mountain for another half hour ; still we 
did not appear to come any nearer to the valley. At last we came 
to a place where a brook turned off from the road into an artificial 
channel which had been dug for it through the grassy mountain 
side toward a house. It was one of the first houses that we came 
to. The bank of the little stream formed a sort of path. We 
turned out of the road, and walked along a little way on this path, 
for there was a train of mules coming down behind us, and we 
wished to wait and let them get by. The road itself was not wide 
enough for us and the mules too. 

We saw two small girls at a distance, near the house. They 
were at work on the little channel which had been dug for the 
brook. They were digging with hoes, and seemed to be carrying 
the channel farther along the field, so as to make it water more of 
the land. As soon as the children saw us, one of them laid down 
her hoe and ran up toward the house. 

"She is coming to beg," we said. " We won't give her any 
thing." 

Presently we saw her coming along with two plates — one in 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



107 



Plums and pears for sale. Habitable regions. A village. 

each hand. She ran as fast as she could for fear that we should 
go away. 

"No, we have accused her falsely; she is not coming to Ibeg; 
she is coming to sell us something." 

When she came to where we were standing, we found that she 
had one plate full of large purple plums, and the other full of 
pears. "We "bought both the plates full. We ate up the plums 
on the the spot, and put the pears in our pockets. 

The child seemed to be very much pleased to have sold so much 
at one time. She ran back to the house again with her plates, and 
presently we saw her hurrying down the steep green slope of the 
fields into the road before us, and thence she went running on 
down the road. We thought that she was going to get more fruit 
in order to replenish her supply. It surprised us to see how nim- 
bly she ran down a road which was so steep and stony that we 
were obliged to proceed very slowly, and with great caution, in or- 
der to descend in safety. 

We were now getting down into habitable regions, and we be- 
gan to pass houses and little farms. Small fields of grain began 
to appear here and there, and orchards and gardens. Presently 
we came to a real and proper village. The houses were small, 
and they were built like the chalets above, only they had windows 
and chimneys, and women and children were sitting at the doors. 

Still down, down, down. The valley began to appear a little 
nearer, but it was yet a great way off. It seemed as if we should 
never reach the bottom of the hill. 

And now the villages began to grow larger, and the farms were 



108 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



Peasant-girls going down " to devotion." Evening coming on. 

more extensive and more fertile, and the scattered houses more 
spacious and comfortable. We met many peasants coming and 
going. The road grew wider and smoother, and there were marks 
of wheels upon it, as if it was sometimes traversed by the little 
carts of the country people. We could begin, too, to see more 
distinctly the features of the landscape in the valley itself — the 
separate fields and villages, the spires, the curves of the rivers, 
and the ruins of an ancient castle on a gray rocky hill behind 
Martigny. 

A large number of neatly-dressed and smiling peasant-girls trip- 
ped by us from time to time, going down into the valley. They 
were dressed very prettily in quite a picturesque costume, and 
looked very bright and happy. They had baskets in their hands, 
and in each basket, besides some things covered up in a cloth, 
there was a book. We asked one of them if they lived down in 
the valley, but they said no ; they were going down, they said, 
"to devotion." It was some religious service at the church, in 
the village below, that they were going to attend. The little books 
in their hands were their prayer-books. 

Thus going on, we found ourselves gradually drawing nearer 
to Martigny. The sun was going down, and the air was cooler, 
and the mountain, which rose to a vast elevation to the westward 
of us, cast a broad shade over all the country. We had walked 
so slowly, too, that we were not at all fatigued, but could easily 
have gone on many more miles if it had been necessary. 

We soon entered the streets of the town, and, after walking on 
for some distance, we came at last to our hotel. The guide who 



OLD BLACK HEAD. 



109 



Arrival at Martigny. Situation of the town. Other travelers come in. 

had brought our baggage was at the door to receive us, and the 
waiter immediately conducted us to a large and handsome cham- 
ber, where we found our trunks and all our baggage safely be- 
stowed. It was about six o'clock, and he told us that dinner at 
the table d'hote would be served at seven. 

It was a large and commodious hotel, and there were several 
other inns in the town, which made quite a conspicuous appearance 
as we passed along the street. Martigny is, indeed, an important 
centre of Alpine travel, for it stands in the Valley of the Rhone, 
directly on the great route from Geneva, by the Simplon, to Italy, 
and at the point where the great road from the hospice of St. Ber- 
nard, and also that leading from the Valley of Chamouny and Mont 
Blanc, by the pass of the Tete Noire, over which we had just been 
traveling, come down into the valley. Numbers of travelers ar- 
rive from these passes every evening, and remain at the inns of 
Martigny over night, to take the great road to Geneva or to Italy, 
by public or private carriages, on the following day. 

We found many persons assembled at the hotel, and many new 
parties were continually arriving, some in carriages, some on mules, 
and some on foot. We amused ourselves with observing these 
arrivals from the window of our room as we sat resting ourselves 
there while we waited for dinner. 

Thus ends the story of our journey over the pass of the Tete 
Noire. It is a pretty fair specimen of a journey over an Alpine 
pass, and that is the reason I have given you so minute an ac- 
count of it, and of all the little scenes and incidents which we met 
with on the way. 



110 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD, 



The monastery of the Great St. Bernard. 



LETTER VII. 

THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 

Hospice of St. Bernard, Aug. 24. 
It is early in the morning, and I write this by the light of the 
candle in my chamber, at the famous monastery of St. Bernard, 
which we have all read of so often in our childhood in America. 
Every body, great and small, in almost every quarter of the civil- 
ized world, has heard of the monastery of St. Bernard, built to re- 
ceive benighted travelers in the higher Alps ; of the wild and des- 
olate situation which it occupies among the eternal rocks and 
snows ; of the avalanches, and the poor travelers overwhelmed by 
them ; and, above all the rest, of the faithful dogs of St. Bernard, 
that were sent down to find the unhappy wayfarers buried in the 
snow, and to carry them food and wine, and then to conduct the 
brethren of the monastery to the spot to rescue them. We came 
up yesterday to see the place. It is a journey of thirty miles — 
up all the way — at first through green and smiling valleys, and 
then through glens and gorges, gradually growing more and more 
wild and desolate, till at last we attain a vast region, many miles 
in extent, in which the face of the country presents nothing to 
view but ranges of bare and barren rocks, with great fields and 
patches of snow lying at the foot of them, the remains of the stu- 
pendous drifts and avalanches of the preceding winter. We came 
up half of the way in a char, and the rest of the way on mules. 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



Ill 



The pass. Intercourse between Switzerland and Italy through the pass. 

We have been greatly interested in our visit, and I commence my 
letter giving you an account of it here, though, as we set out on 
our return after breakfast this morning, I shall be obliged to post- 
pone finishing it until I get back again into the valley below. 

The rocks and rocky mountains all around us are very singular. 
They rise in lofty peaks" and pinnacles many thousand feet above 
the gorge in which the monastery is built. This gorge, in connec- 
tion with the series of valleys through which we have come up, 
has been, for nearly two thousand years, the best and principal 
thoroughfare from Switzerland into Italy, and a great many trav- 
elers have been accustomed to pass through it every year for many 
centuries. These travelers consisted, in a great measure, of labor- 
ers from Switzerland, going, in the spring, into Piedmont, on the 
Italian side of the mountains, to seek work, and their returning 
again to their homes in the fall. This was the reason why the 
monastery was built here, rather than in any other part of the 
mountains. 

It happened that these poor travelers were obliged to pass in 
winter, or at least while it was winter on the mountains, though it 
might be pleasant spring or autumn weather on the general sur- 
face of the earth below. It also happened that, for a mile or two, 
the road through the pass — and the only possible road — lay through 
a succession of valleys so narrow, and bordered on both sides by 
ranges of mountains so steep and so high, that immense avalanch- 
es in the winter were perpetually sliding down and overwhelming 
the road. It was here, therefore, that the travelers would stand 
most in need of succor and relief ; and it was here, consequently, 



112 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



The objects aimed at by the institution. Called to see the dogs. 

in the midst of the wildest and most desolate portion of the gorge, 
that the monastery was built. 

The object of the institution was not merely to supply the or- 
dinary accommodations of an inn to the poor travelers who should 
have occasion to cross the mountains by this pass, but also to fur- 
nish the means of rescuing them from the peculiar dangers that 
they were exposed to on the way. For this purpose, dogs were 
provided to assist in searching for any who might be buried in 
the snow, and the means of resuscitation for those who should be 
found benumbed and nearly perishing with the cold, and medicines 
for the sick, and every thing else required for such a place of ref- 
uge. It may seem strange, perhaps, that so dangerous a road 
should continue to be traveled, but there was no alternative. 



Just at this point my attention was diverted from my writing 
by hearing the sound of music, which seemed to come in slow and 
solemn tones, as from an organ, along the corridor. A moment 
afterward, a domestic knocked at the door to inform us that the 
hour for divine service in the chapel had arrived, and we accord- 
ingly went to the chapel. I have now just returned again to my 
room, and I see from my window that the company are looking at 
the dogs, and we must go down and see them too, so I must post- 
pone my account of the service in the chapel till I come to it in its 
proper place in the narrative of the excursion ; and the writing of 
this narrative I must postpone, for immediately after breakfast we 
are to set out on our return to Martigny. 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



113 



Nature of the pass. Travel upon it. Dangers of the way. 

In order that you may understand the nature and character of 
the great pass of St. Bernard, and of the hospice, as it is called, 
which is established at the head of it, and which has become so 
famous throughout all the world, I must first explain to you that 
Switzerland is separated from Italy by a tract of mountainous land, 
perhaps fifty miles wide, and along the crest of it eight or ten 
thousand feet high, and that this tract it is necessary to cross in 
going from one country to the other. It is very difficult to cross 
it, too, for by far the greater portion of the whole region is cov- 
ered, through all seasons of the year, with immense fields of ice and 
snow. 

Indeed, the only possible way to accomplish the journey is by 
means of the valleys. You follow up the valley, from one side or 
the other, into the heart of the mountains, ascending all the time 
higher and higher, among rocks, and glaciers, and snow, until at 
last you approach the crest ; and then you pass over from the term- 
ination of the valley on one side to the beginning of one on the 
other, through the lowest place in the crest of land that you can 
find, though these lowest places are usually some thousands of 
feet higher than the peaks of the highest mountains in the United 
States. 

Such a low place as this in the crest of the mountains, with the 
valleys connected with it on both sides, is called a pass, and the 
pass of St. Bernard is one of the most celebrated. It is not now 
the easiest pass, for better roads have been made over others ; but 
it was one of the earliest known, and it was more traveled, in for- 
mer times, than almost any other. 



114 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



Situation of the hospice buildings. Poles to mark the road. 

On the opposite page you see a picture of the summit of the 
pass, with the hospice built there for the accommodation of trav- 
elers. It is here that the road passes through the gap in the crest 
of the mountains in going from the head of the valley, which the 
path followed up on one side, to the commencement of the one by 
which it is to descend on the other. The hospice buildings seem 
themselves to stand in a valley, but it is really only a depression 
in a crest of a very lofty range of mountains. The buildings are 
on the height of land. You see a little lake this side of them, the 
water of which lies calm and still, poised so exactly on the sum- 
mit between Switzerland and Italy that it can not flow either way. 
In the winter, this lake, as well as the whole valley in which it 
lies, is buried deep under immense accumulations of ice and snow. 

This place is more than eight thousand feet above the level of 
the sea, which is, I think, about two thousand feet higher than 
the summit of Mount Washington, so that winter reigns here al- 
most all the year. There are but two months when it does not 
snow. When the snow begins to fall, all traces of the road im- 
mediately disappear, and then travelers find their way by means of 
poles set up along the line. You see these poles in the picture. 

Nothing can be more desolate and wild than the scenery around 
the hospice. Not a tree is to be seen ; nothing grows, in fact, but 
moss and lichens in the crevices of the rocks, and here and there a 
few patches of scanty herbage. . All the provisions for the hospice, 
all the wood for the fires, all the materials for building or for re- 
pairs — every thing, in fact, that is required, has to be brought up 
a very steep and rocky path, for miles, on the backs of mules or 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 




116 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



What travelers pass by this route. Character of the hospice. 

of men. All the wood for the fires has to be brought thus about 
twelve miles. 

This pass has been known and traveled for a very long period 
of time. There is evidence of a hospice on the summit of it ex- 
isting more than a thousand years ago. Of all the openings 
through the mountains, this pass is, by nature, one of the most 
convenient, and for many centuries it was the great thoroughfare. 
Other roads, better than this, have been opened, by dint of great 
labor and expense, in modern times, but still the pass of St. Ber- 
nard is used by vast multitudes of peasants and laborers, who go 
back and forth in the fall and spring. They go from Switzerland 
early in the spring to seek work in Italy, and then come back to 
their homes among the Alpine valleys late in the fall, when their 
work is done. Of course, it is mid- winter, as it were, on the pass, 
both when they go and when they return. 

The hospice was established by the charitable monks of the 
Catholic Church in the Middle Ages to furnish a place of refuge 
and rest for these poor travelers on the way. A hospice is an inn 
kept for the sake of charity. It is substantially like any other inn, 
only that all travelers who come to it are received and taken care 
of without having any thing to pay. 

You will ask, I suppose, how is the hospice supported? It is 
supported partly by the rent of lands and the income of other 
property given to it by its founders, and partly by the contributions 
of various kinds made at the present day. Some of these contri- 
butions are collected in the Swiss towns from people living there 
who wish well to the poor peasants that have to go over to Italy 



THE GREAT ST. BEENAED. 



117 



Manner in which the hospice is supported. 

for work, and are glad to pay something for the support of the 
inn where they stop to rest by the way. The establishment is 
aided, too, a great deal by the gifts of travelers who visit it from mo- 
tives of curiosity or pleasure, in the summer season, and who are 
not poor. These rich tourists are received as guests, just as the 
poor travelers are that come in the fall and spring, and no charge 
is made for their entertainment ; but almost all of them, before 
they leave, go into the chapel and put a Napoleon or two into a 
contribution-box which hangs there against the wall. They put 
in at least as much as they would have to pay for the same accom- 
modations at any ordinary inn. All these contributions in the 
course of the summer amount to a considerable sum. 

There is no difficulty in visiting the hospice in the summer sea- 
son, for then the snow has almost all melted away, even in the 
highest part of the pass, and nearest the hospice, though it is never 
entirely gone. The tourists always find some patches of it left in 
the road, which the mules have to pass over ; but in February and 
March, when the laborers go over, and in November and Decem- 
ber, when they come home, the w T ay is very difficult, and some- 
times full of danger. 

The reason of this is, that for a long distance before reaching 
the hospice, in ascending to it from either side, the only possible 
place for a path lies along so narrow a valley, and is so close un- 
der the slopes of steep and lofty mountain sides, that vast masses 
of snow are continually sliding down and burying it up. 

These avalanches sometimes take place during the continuance 
of the storm, while the snow is still falling, and sometimes after 



118 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



Avalanches. Manner in which they are formed. Travelers. 

the storm is over, when the immense masses of snow that cling to 
the mountain sides have become softened by the sun. In either 
case the poor traveler, who may be slowly forcing his toilsome 
way in the valley below, is overwhelmed by them if he happens to 
be passing along the place where they descend. 

There is no possible way of avoiding the danger, for the only 
path, for miles before reaching the summit of the pass, lies along 
a narrow valley, with these immense mountain slopes on either 
hand. Sometimes, in a city, it is dangerous walking in the streets 
after a snow-storm, on account of the avalanches that come down 
from the roofs, small as the surface is that the snow clings to. 
This valley is like a street, with roofs coming down to the very 
pavement, and rising above for miles. Think of the overwhelm- 
ing masses that must be sliding down in such situations. 

The snow-storms come on very suddenly and unexpectedly, 
and the travelers, in commencing their journey in the valleys be- 
low, have very little means of knowing what sort of weather they 
will have when they enter the lonely and desolate part of the road, 
which extends for several leagues on each side of the summit. 
When they set out in the morning the air is mild and balmy, and 
the sun is bright and clear. Perhaps a few fleecy clouds may be 
seen reposing quietly on the summit of the distant mountains, but 
in the valley where their journey begins all is smiling and serene, 
and so they set out without fear. 

They walk on all the day, ascending higher and higher every 
hour, and traversing paths more and more steep and rugged. 
They wind through wild and desolate glens ; they creep along on 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



119 



Progress of the journey over the pass. The hut of refuge. 

the margins of frightful precipices ; they climb around projecting 
promontories of rock, and advance in a long and winding line at 
the foot of stupendous cliffs which overhang them. The air grows 
cold as the day declines. At length the sky becomes overcast, 
the wind howls round them, and flakes of driving snow, flying in 
scuds through the air, shut out every thing distant from their view, 
and blind them to all that is near. In a word, they are entering 
one of those fleecy clouds that they had seen from below, reposing 
so serenely, as it seemed, on the mountains above. 

They are, however, still several miles from the summit, and 
there is no shelter near. They passed, long ago, the last mount- 
ain cabin. In the mean time, the freshly-fallen snow grows deep- 
er and deeper at every step, and before them and behind them they 
hear, from time to time, the long-continued thundering sound of 
the avalanches that are sliding down from the heights above into 
the valley through which their only pathway lies. 

Two or three miles from the summit of the pass is a small 
stone hut, built as a refuge for travelers who are overtaken by 
night, in stormy times, in this dangerous part of the road. If 
they succeed in making this shelter, they creep into it, and wait 
there until morning. It is, in fact, little more than a rude arch, 
built of stone, with an opening at one end for an entrance. The 
monks from the convent, after a stormy night, go down to this 
place in the morning, to carry refreshments and help to the travel- 
ers that may have sought shelter there. 

They, however, often expose themselves to great danger by so 
doing, for the vast slopes of the mountains that border the valley 



120 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 



Party overwhelmed by an avalanche. Some account of the dogs. 

on each side are loaded with immense masses of snow, suspended, 
as it were, by a thread, ready at any instant to fall and overwhelm 
all beneath them in irretrievable ruin. Some years ago, a party 
from the convent went down the valley, on the Italian side, to look 
for travelers lost in the snow. They took two dogs with them. 
They found one traveler, and were coming back with him to the 
convent, when an immense avalanche came down upon them and 
buried them all. One of the dogs succeeded in scrambling out of 
the snow, and in making his way back to the convent, but the oth- 
er dog and all the men were killed ; and so deep did the avalanche 
bury them, that the bodies could not be found till the next sum- 
mer when the snow melted away. 

The dogs are of great use in these excursions. Those that are 
employed are of a peculiar breed. They are very large and very 
sagacious. They go before the men and explore the snow. If 
they come upon the track of a man, they can follow it by the scent, 
and so bring help to him when, perhaps, he is just ready to per- 
ish. Even if he has fallen down, and is entirely concealed by the 
snow which has drifted over him, they will often find the place 
where he lies. 

It was to visit this convent that we set out from our hotel at 
Martigny on the morning of the day before the beginning of this 
letter was written. In the next I will give you some account of 
our adventures on the journey. 



THE EXCUKSION. 121 



Road to the pass. The Dranse. The great inundation. 



LETTER VIII. 

THE EXCUESION. 

You can go about half the way to the summit of the pass of St. 
Bernard in a carriage ; after that the road is so steep and nar- 
row, and it runs so often on the verge of such dangerous preci- 
pices, that it is necessary to go on horses or mules. So our jour- 
ney was to begin with a ride of about twelve miles in a carriage. 

When we came to the entrance of the valley which we were to 
follow up into the mountains, we found ourselves on the banks of 
a roaring river, which came sweeping along its bed swift as an ar- 
row. This river is called the Dranse. Our road lay along its 
banks for many miles. It is a terrible river for floods and inun- 
dations. Some years ago, a glacier, coming down from the mount- 
ain side into one of the valleys that this torrent flows through, 
crowded slowly right across the bed of the river, and dammed it 
up so as in the course of a few weeks to make a lake many miles 
long and some hundreds of feet deep. After a while the pressure 
of the water broke the barrier of ice away, and then the whole 
came pouring down into the valleys, bringing an immense deluge 
of water, ice, rocks, sand, and gravel into all the villages and over 
all the fertile fields. A great many persons were drowned, and a 
vast quantity of property was destroyed. The people of the val- 
ley remember this calamity to the present day with terror. 

As we passed along the streets of Martigny, just before we en- 



122 



THE EXCURSION. 



The torrent of the river. Views down the valley. The road. 

tered the Valley of the Dranse, we came to a place where there was 
a long black mark drawn on the side of a stone building, higher 
from the ground than a man's head, to show the level of the water 
in the streets at the time of the inundation. 

We went on up the valley, and soon found ourselves shut in on 
both sides with lofty mountains. The river roared and foamed 
along its rocky bed far below us, down in the bottom of the valley. 
The road continually ascended, until at length we were so high 
that we could scarcely hear the roaring of the river, although the 
bed of it was almost directly beneath our feet. The road was 
walled up on the side toward the valley, and it followed the ine- 
qualities of the land with a great many most extraordinary turn- 
ings and windings. Over the edge of it we could look down upon 
a vast extent of most beautiful and fertile land far below us, adorn- 
ed with fields, gardens, orchards, villages, and hamlets, in endless 
variety, and with little zigzag paths winding up and down the 
mountain sides from one elevation to another. As, sitting in our 
char a banc, we looked down upon these smiling scenes of verdure 
and beauty from the narrow road built along the mountain side, at 
a vast elevation above them, it seemed as if we were sitting upon 
a sofa on a shelf in the sky, and were looking down upon the world 
below as we were drawn along. 

The road was, indeed, very much like a shelf, for in those places 
where it was built up by a wall on the side toward the valley there 
was no parapet or railing, or any other defense whatever. If we 
had dropped an apple out of the carriage on that side, it would be 
rolled off over the brink. Besides this, the road was not wide, 



THE EXCUESION. 



123 



The girl on the brink knitting. The paysanne coming home from her work. 

and the postillion often went very near the margin. It seemed to 
be entirely indifferent to him how near to it the wheels ran. The 
people of the country are so accustomed to these things, that they 
feel as much at their ease on the edge of a precipice as a carpenter 
does on the scaffold of a building. At one time we passed a little 
girl standing by the road-side knitting. She was on the outer 
side, on the very brink of the wall. If she had stepped back a 
single step as we went by, she would have fallen a hundred feet ; 
but she went on with her knitting, and looked at us while we 
passed as unconcernedly and as much at her ease as if she had 
been sitting on the steps of her father's door. 

At another place we saw a peasant-girl riding along in the road 
before us. She was a very substantial-looking girl, nineteen or 
twenty years of age. She had been out haying, and was now go- 
ing home, taking the mule with her. The mule had also been at 
work, and he had a pack-saddle on his back. The girl was sitting 
square on the pack-saddle, her two feet hanging together down 
one side. She had no bridle, and she seemed to pay no attention 
to the mule's going, but let him find his own way. She had a 
wooden pitchfork in her hand, made of a forked pole, and with this 
she banged the mule a little on his back now and then, when he 
walked too slow. 

When we came up to this girl, she allowed the mule to turn out 
just as he pleased, to let our char a banc go by, and he chose the 
outside of the road, so that, as we passed, the girl was riding care- 
lessly along on the very edge of the wall, with her back to the 
brink. She paid no attention to her situation, but was wholly 



124 



THE EXCURSION. 



The mule in no danger. Remarkable scenery. The midday inn. 

occupied with examining us as we rode by ; and yet, if the mule 
had gone over the brink, he would have fallen with his rider fifty 
feet down a perpendicular wall, and then probably five hundred feet 
more down a slope of rugged rocks. But there was no danger of 
his going over. He knew very well where he was, and, far from 
going over of his own accord, probably no amount of banging 
whatever with the wooden pitchfork, or with any thing else, would 
have made him go over, if the woman had stood in the road and 
had attempted to drive him. 

We went steadily on up the valley, all the time ascending. 
The road twisted and turned this way and that, in continual 
windings, so as to present to us a constant succession of new and 
ever-varying scenes. Sometimes we found ourselves creeping 
along under a range of cliffs, with stupendous masses of rock over- 
hanging the road. Then we would turn round a projecting prom- 
ontory, and ascend by a succession of zigzags — the road turning 
continually upon itself — up a steep mountain side. Thence we 
would, perhaps, pass into a wood ; at the end of the w^ood we 
would come out upon the brink of a precipice overhanging a fright- 
ful chasm ; and thence, suddenly turning into a dell, we would 
find ourselves entering the narrow street of a compact little vil- 
lage. About the middle of the day we came to such a village, 
and stopped at the inn. The guide said that we were to leave 
our carriage there, and go the rest of the way upon mules. 

" Is this the end of the carriage-road ?" 

"No, sir, it is not quite the end of it, but it is too steep be- 
yond this for wheels." 



THE EXCUESION. 



125 



Bolsters of hay. Bread for the mules. 

So we stopped to dinner. The guide left our char a banc, with 
others, near the door of the inn, by the side of the narrow street, 
and after dinner he led the two mules up to the door, all saddled 
and bridled, and with a monstrous bolster of hay tied on behind 
the saddle of each. Hay is so scarce on the top of the pass that 
each mule that goes up carries his supper and breakfast with him 
on his back. 

Besides the hay which the men give the horses and mules in 
Switzerland, they feed them also with bread. The bread which 
they use for this purpose is very coarse in texture, and is of a dark 
color, but the mules like it very much. Our guide carrried some 
of this bread in his pocket, and from time to time he would take 
it out and feed his mules with it, cutting off small pieces of it with 
his knife, and giving them a little at a time. 

The road soon became very steep, and the country became 
more and more wild and desolate the higher we ascended. The 
villages were succeeded by rude hamlets, and the gardens, the or- 
chards, and the cultivated fields, which had adorned so richly the 
lower portion of the valley, gradually disappeared. In their 
places we saw only stunted forests, barren rocks, and steep green 
slopes extending up the mountain sides, with flocks of sheep and 
goats scattered here and there upon them. The road, in the mean 
time, had become a narrow and rocky mule-path, full of difficulty, 
and, in some places, apparently not a little dangerous. Bleak and 
barren mountains lay all around us ; their summits were generally 
bare peaks of rock, but great patches of snow lay here and there 
upon the sides of them. From the lower point of each of these 



126 



THE EXCURSION. 



Within one hour of the summit. The hospice comes at length into view. 

snow-fields there issued a small streamlet, which we could trace 
for some distance trickling down the mountain side to join the tor- 
rent in the bottom of the valley. 

The road grew steeper and steeper the farther we ascended, and 
more and more rocky, until at last it became a perfect scramble 
for the poor mules. At length the guide told us that we were 
within one hour of the summit. One hour on such a steep, rough 
road means about two and a half or three miles. Here we came 
to the place of refuge built to receive and shelter poor benighted 
travelers overtaken by the snow, and not able to reach the hospice. 
It stood in a bare and desolate place, and was a very dismal-look- 
ing abode, but I presume it is often a very welcome shelter to 
those who are compelled to resort to it. We rode up to the door 
of it and looked in ; it was like a large stone arch in an old cellar. 

We rode on, scrambling up the steep and rocky path, until at 
last the hospice came suddenly into view. The last part of the 
road passed over the snow itself. We were afraid that the feet of 
the mules would sink into the snow in walking over it, but they 
did not. The surface of it had been melting slowly, it is true, all 
the day, but it was very compact and solid below, and the mules 
walked over it very easily. These great patches of snow, that lie 
all summer in the valley, are the remains of the avalanches that 
came down from the mountains above during the winter and 
spring. 

We rode up to the door of the hospice and dismounted from 
our mules. We ascended the stone steps, and entered a sort of 
hall paved with stone, somewhat uncertain how we were to behave 



THE EXCUESION. 



127 



Our reception at the hospice. Party around the fire. Supper. 

in coming thus, as guests, to a house where we were perfect stran- 
gers. A servant, however, received us, and conducted us up a 
short flight of stone stairs to a door, and there rung a bell. The 
door was immediately opened, and we were ushered into a sort of 
hall, which seemed the dining-room and parlor of the establish- 
ment. 

A table, set for supper, extended up and down the room, and 
at the farther end a bright wood fire was blazing in a large open 
fire-place. Several persons — travelers and guests who had arrived 
before us- — were seated near the fire. One of the monks was with 
them. He rose when we came in, and advanced to meet us, and 
then conducted us to seats near the fire. The warmth of the fire 
was exceedingly agreeable, for, although it is midsummer, and was 
very hot in the valley below, the night air at this vast elevation 
was extremely cold. 

Soon other travelers arrived. "We all gathered round the fire 
and engaged in conversation. Some talked in French, some in 
English, some in Spanish, and some in Italian, according to the 
nations to which we severally belonged. The monk who had re- 
ceived us was the head of the establishment, and was called the 
Father Clavandier. He was a very intelligent and agreeable 
man, and was extremely courteous and polite to all. He enter- 
tained us with a great many interesting anecdotes and narratives 
connected with the history of the hospice, the mode of life led 
there in the winter, the famous passage of the mountains made at 
this place by Napoleon with his army in 1800, ajnd other such 
topics suited to the place and the occasion. All this time the 



128 



THE EXCURSION. 



The Father Clavandier. The bed-room. Cold night. 

servants were busy preparing the supper. At length they an- 
nounced it was ready, and the Clavandier invited us to take seats 
at the table. There were, I suppose, twenty or thirty of us in all. 

"While we were at supper other travelers continued to arrive, 
and as soon as we rose the servants began to prepare the table 
again for the new party. We went to the door to look out. It 
was growing dark, and there was nothing to be seen around us but 
gloomy mountains and great wastes of snow. We came back to 
the parlor again, and talked together a little longer around the 
fire, and then went to our several rooms. One of the servants 
showed us the way to our chamber, and in a few minutes after- 
ward a woman came with a warming-pan, in order, if we wished it, 
to warm the bed. 

It is a hard day's work to ascend from the Valley of the Rhone 
up to the hospice, and we were very tired and sleepy. There was 
a cold wintry wind blowing through the valley without, but the 
window of our chamber was very small, and the walls of it were 
extremely thick, and so, feeling ourselves secure in our shelter, 
we went to sleep. 

In the morning I awoke early, and rose before it was light, in 
order to begin this letter ; but I was interrupted, as I have al- 
ready said, first by the sound of music from the chapel of the hos- 
pice, where the monks were engaged in their morning devotions. 
We went immediately along the corridor toward the chapel. The 
sound of the music, coming in slow and solemn tones, was our 
guide. On entering the chapel, we found ourselves, with many 
other visitors, in a little gallery at one end, from which we could 



Morning worship in the chapel. 



THE EXCURSION. 



Solemn effect of it. 



The dogs. 



look down on a very exciting and solemn scene. The chapel was 
small, but it was very beautiful, being richly adorned with paint- 
ings, sculptures, gilded carvings, and votive offerings of all kinds. 
The monks, in richly embroidered robes, were going to and fro, or 
bowing before the altar. Some were bearing tall candles, some 
were burning incense, and some were offering prayers, while the 
swelling notes of the organ filled the vaulted hall with their sweet 
and solemn melodies. We had often, thousands of miles away, 
heard this music imitated in scenic representations of St. Bernard 
and the Alps ; but now the thought that we were on the actual 
spot — that what we saw and heard was the living reality, and no 
dramatic disguise — that those were the real monks of St. Bernard, 
and the pilgrims that were kneeling on the stone floor below us 
were real pilgrims, and that the music which we heard was the 
real music that had for so many centuries mingled its plaintive 
sounds with the wailing of the wintry storms in that desolate 
abode, and with the lamentations and mournings of lonely travel- 
ers whose friends and companions had been lost in the snows — 
these and other such thoughts filled us with indescribable emo- 
tions of solemnity and awe. 

Among the pictures hanging in the chapel was one of St. Ber- 
nard and his dog. The dog stood by the holy father's side, and 
looked up into his face as if waiting for a command to go out into 
the snow. 

The real dogs that we went to see after we returned to our 
chamber when the service in the chapel was concluded were out 
upon a little green plot of ground before the door of the hospice. 

20 ° I 



130 



THE EXCURSION. 



We all go out on the green to see the dogs. 

The door where we came out was on the back side of the hospice, 
and is the one seen in the engraving on page 115. When we 
went down we found the dogs walking about in presence of quite 
a number of tourists and travelers who had come out to look at 
them. There were only two of them. They were very large, and 
walked about with an air of great dignity and decorum, as if they 
were aware that the company were admiring them for the grandeur 
of their character and for their heroic exploits. The expression 
of their countenances denoted great kindness of disposition, com- 
bined with great courage and energy. 

The morning air was very fresh and cool. Indeed, there was a 
large, fleecy white cloud floating over the summit of the pass just 
at that time, and we, who were standing on the green looking at 
the dogs, were in the midst of it. We could see the little flecks 
of it flitting along the face of the rocks which bordered the pass, 
and just over our heads there was a bright place where the sun 
was breaking through. 

We walked a little way along the green to look into the win- 
dow of a small building which serves as a sort of tomb, where the 
bodies of the dead that are found in the snows are deposited until 
they are taken away by their friends. A number of bodies that 
had not been claimed were still there. We looked at them 
through a grated window. It was a shocking spectacle. 

After this we walked about the place for a few minutes longer, 
looking down upon the lake, or up upon the lofty mountains that 
towered on each side of the pass far above our heads, and then, 
when the bell rang for breakfast, we went in. After breakfast, 



THE EXCUESION. 



131 



Coming down. Scrambling over the rocks. The children. 

we found the mules all drawn up in a line before the door, ready 
for the travelers to set out on their return. The road was so 
steep, however, for the first three miles of the way, that most of 
us preferred to walk. Some set out in little groups or parties, 
three or four together, and began to scramble down the rugged 
path, supporting ourselves by our alpenstocks, which we had 
brought up for the purpose. 

For several miles we saw no sign of any human habitation — 
nothing but bare rocks and great patches of snow, with here and 
there some small traces of verdure. The slopes of green increased 
in extent as we descended, and at last I saw before me, sitting 
in a sunny place on a knoll just above the road, three little girls 
knitting. 

When I came up to the place I accosted them. 

"Do you live any where near here?" 

" Oh no, sir ; we live down in the valley." 

" And what are you doing up here?" 

" We are watching the cows." 

So saying, they pointed off to a green pasture-ground on the 
mountain side near them, where we could discern some cows feed- 
ing. We talked with the children a little longer, and then bade 
them good-by. They went on with their knitting, and we went 
on our way down toward the valley below. 

The path was formed of rugged but slippery rocks, and it con- 
ducted us sometimes on the verge of frightful precipices, sometimes 
by sharp zigzags down steep declivities, and sometimes along the 
margin of a roaring torrent. Every where there was difficulty and 



132 



THE EXCURSION. 



Coming down the pass. Steep descent. Lonely inn. Return to Martigny. 

danger enough to keep up a continual excitement in our minds, 
and sometimes enough to have awakened serious fears if we had 
been mounted on our mules. Some from among the various par- 
ties of travelers were thus mounted, but almost all chose to walk 
in going over this part of the road, and we could see them, both 
above us and below us, as we looked back or forward, creep slow- 
ly along in files, three or four together, feeling their way among 
the rocks by means of their pike-staves, or turning the corners of 
the zigzags as they came down the more precipitous parts of the 
descent. 

After proceeding in this way for an hour or two, we came at 
length to a place where the path became so much better that it was 
safe to ride, and then, one after another, the various parties called 
up their guides and mounted their mules. After this we contin- 
ued our journey, still rapidly descending, until we came to the first 
human habitation where travelers have an opportunity to stop for 
rest. It was a sort of an inn, though it stood in as wild, and 
lonely, and desolate a place as can well be imagined. TTe found 
here a great number of mules belonging to people who had arrived 
before us. The mules were standing before the door. The guides 
were feeding them with bits of bread. Their riders were mount- 
ing or dismounting, or coming in or out at the door of the inn. We 
remained a short time here, and then went on our way by a grad- 
ually improving road, until at last, about the middle of the day, 
to our great satisfaction, we reached the village where we had left 
our char. Here we stopped to dine, and then enjoyed an easy 
and a very delightful ride down the valley to Martigny. 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



133 



The hot springs among the Alps. Leuk. Extraordinary zigzags. 



LETTER IX. 

THE BATHS OF LEUK. 

Hotel des Alps, Leuk,* Aug. 29. 

It is very surprising that among the cold and icy regions of the 
upper Alps, where the valleys are filled with glaciers, and the hill- 
sides are covered, even in midsummer, with patches of snow, and 
where winter reigns supreme for nine months in the year, there 
should sometimes appear springs of almost boiling-hot water com- 
ing up out of the ground ; but so it is. I am now in one of the 
places where such springs are found. It is in a secluded valley 
high up among the mountains, and is surrounded on all sides but 
one by glaciers, and by a range of stupendous cliffs and precipices 
of rock, which rise several thousand feet above us on every side, 
and shut us in like a wall. 

The side of the wall which is not thus shut in opens, through 
an awful chasm, to the valleys below. Up this chasm there was 
for ages only a foot-path, but now there is a road, which ascends 
by windings and zigzags of the most remarkable character. The 
chasm is six miles long ; it is several thousand feet deep, and the 
sides are in many places perpendicular, and in all so steep that no 
road could possibly be made, except by being walled up on the 
lower side, and also being carried to and fro in every conceivable 
direction along the slopes and around the ravines. Indeed, in 

* Pronounced Loik. 



134 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



Extraordinary features of the scenery on the way to Leuk. 

coming up the valley, the road seems to traverse almost every part 
of the ground on both sides. Stop where you will, and look about 
you, and you see the road every where, above and below, before 
and behind you, on this side and on that. Look down over the 
brink, where you are riding along, and you see it there a thousand 
feet below you, with a train of mules coming on where you were 
half an hour ago ; look up over your head, and you see it there, 
with the top of a carriage slowly advancing over it, where you will 
be half an hour hence ; look across the valley, and there, running 
along on the brink of an awful precipice, you see it again, with the 
bridge, hanging in mid-air, by which you crossed from that side 
to this. In a word, it is the most astonishing of all the astonish- 
ing mountain-roads that Switzerland contains. 

The views that you see around you, too, in creeping up the 
windings and zigzags, are most remarkable. Here you behold a 
perpendicular precipice a thousand feet high, with a path cut in 
the rock midway, and a train of mules, scarcely discernible, slowly 
moving on under an arch of rock above, formed by cutting into the 
precipice to make a path. On another side you see an elegant 
English traveling carriage advancing along the brink of a preci- 
pice, with a foaming torrent five hundred or a thousand feet be- 
low. Opposite to you, across the valley, on a shelf of the rocks, 
is a village of reddish-brown modern houses, with a white stone 
church, and a spire in the centre. How the people ever get up to 
it, or, once up, how they ever get down, is a surpassing wonder. 
At another place, you look down upon an extensive slope of green 
pasture-land as steep as the roof of a house. It is a mile wide. 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



135 



The villages on the mountain sides. The ladders 

and it extends two miles up and down the mountain, and ends in 
a perpendicular precipice at the bottom. It is covered with scat- 
tered houses, and seems densely inhabited, and yet it is so smooth 
and looks so very steep in every part, that it seems to you that 
if a child were to drop an apple at the door of any of the houses, 
it would roll down a mile or more, and then fall a thousand feet 
over the precipice into the foaming torrent that you can just hear 
faintly roaring over the rocks below. 

You wonder how the inhabitants of these regions ever get up to 
them from the valleys, or, once up, how they ever get down. 
The paths by which they ascend are indeed extremely steep and 
difficult. There is one tract of country which contains several 
square miles of land, and two or three villages, which is up so high, 
and is so surrounded with precipices, that, instead of a path, they 
go up and down by a series of ladders. They go up as high as 
they can go by a steep zigzag path made in the lower slope of the 
mountain, and then, when they come to the foot of the cliffs, they 
ascend two or three hundred feet higher by ladders, one above an- 
other, fastened against the rocks. The lower ends of the ladders 
rest upon any little shelf or projection found to sustain them, and 
the upper ends are pegged to the rocks by wooden pegs, and this 
is the way the people go up and down to their houses. 

When we arrived at the head of the valley where the hot springs 
were situated, we found a very green and beautiful lap of land, two 
miles wide, perhaps, and two or three miles long, with the village 
in the centre of it. The village consists of two or three hundred 
small log cabins, one very antique and very queer-looking church, 



136 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



The village of Leuk. Hotels. Character of the valley. 

and five or six large and showy hotels. The cabins were hud- 
dled together without any order and without any streets. In- 
stead of walking in streets, you ramble about any where among 
the cabins and through the back yards. Indeed, when the great 
carriage-road was made, and they set up a stage to come to the 
baths, they found there was no way by which it could get into 
town. So they had to pull down some of the cabins, and cut 
away parts of the others, to make a passage for it ; and the pas- 
sage thus made, narrow, crooked, and irregular, is the nearest ap- 
proach to a street that the village contains* 

Around the village are smooth and beautiful green fields, with 
here and there groves of evergreen trees among them, which rise 
on every side to the foot of the mountains. The mountains are 
stupendous crags, gray, smooth, and bare, and rising from sixteen 
hundred to two thousand feet, apparently perpendicular. The 
surface of the rock seems smooth, but the forms which it takes are 
infinitely varied. The different cliffs present the appearance of 
great round towers, buttresses, and bastions, ending in colossal 
battlements and pinnacles above. Here and there are dark chasms 
between the cliffs, in the depths of which you see cascades and wa- 
terfalls descending. 

The whole range seems to inclose the valley like a wall, and 
you would not think it possible in any way to get over it. 

There is a way over it, however, by a pass called the Gemmi, 
which is one of the most remarkable and most celebrated in all the 
Alps. We can see the zigzags of this path from our windows. 
It is about a mile from us across the valley. We can barely dis- 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



137 



The zigzags seen through the glass. Watching the mules coming down. 

cern the zigzag by means of our glass. They look like faint lines 
drawn to and fro along the surface of the rocks. We can trace 
these zigzags for one or two miles up the rocks, until at last, 
when the path has attained to about half way up to the summit, 
it enters a great chasm and disappears. We have been watching 
a train of mules that are making the ascent with a party of tour- 
ists. We can scarcely discern them with the naked eye, but with 
the glass we can see them very distinctly as they move slowly 
along. 

First we followed them along the level road which leads across 
the valley from the village to the foot of the mountain. They 
grew smaller and smaller as they went on, and at length became 
too small to be seen just as the road entered into a forest. 

About half a mile farther on the road came out of the forest, 
and then commenced the zigzags, so we determined to watch the 
place with the glass, and observe the mules as soon as they should 
reappear. 

"There, they are coming ! One mule — two — three — four — five. 
Five mules. The guide for each mule is walking before him. 
There are gentlemen on two of the mules, and ladies on two ; and 
one mule is loaded with baggage. Take the glass and look." 

" Yes, I see them. Now they are turning the first zigzag. 
How pretty they look, such a long line winding round the point 
of the zigzag." 

The first series of zigzags led up through a rough-looking pas- 
ture-land, and then the path came to the foot of a vast fan-shaped 



138 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



Character of the road leading up the pass. 

mass of debris, which consisted of stones and gravel that had been 
washed down from a chasm in the rocks above, and lay in a steep 
slope, pointed at the top and round below. Up this slope the 
path ascended in sharp zigzags. We followed the mules up this 
debris as the column turned, now this way and now that, till it 
reached nearly the top of it. 

" I can not see where they can possibly go next. It seems to 
be a bare, smooth, and perpendicular precipice above this debris." 

"Nor can L I have been looking w T ith the glass, and can see 
no signs of any path. Now they come almost to the top of the 
debris. I shall see in a minute or two where they will go. Yes, 
they are turning now. Look! look! it is perfectly amazing. 
They seem to be creeping along the very face of the rock, midway 
between the top of the precipice and the bottom. I can not see 
the least sign of a path, but there must be one there. Now they 
are taking a turn. I think they are going round a deep ravine or 
chasm." 

This path, invisible to us where we are sitting, on a seat in front 
of the hotel, leads along the face of the rock for some distance, 
perhaps a quarter of a mile, till it comes to a great buttress which 
projects in some degree from the clifTs at the angle of an immense 
chasm. At first we did not perceive that there was any projec- 
tion here, but, on a careful survey of it with the glass, we could 
see it pretty distinctly, and at last could perceive that the path 
ascended it in zigzags. We could barely discern the lines of the 
zigzags, so faintly were they delineated along the gray surface of 
the rock. The line of mules, however, marked it out for us very 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



139 



View of the lower portion of the pass as seen in an opera-glass. 

plainly as they went up, though how it was possible that any liv- 
ing thing could make such an ascent it seemed difficult to con- 
ceive. We watched them as they slowly ascended, turning re- 
peatedly first in one direction and then in another, until at length, 
in about fifteen or twenty minutes, they reached the top of the 
buttress. The appearance which they presented to us, as seen 
through the glass, is represented in this engraving. 




VIEW THROUGH THE GLASS. 



From the top of the buttress the road turned and passed along 
the face of an overhanging rock, by a sort of groove cut for it in 



140 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



Account of a visit to the ladders. 

the rock, as you will see in the upper part of the view represented 
in the engraving. At the end of this passage the path disappear- 
ed in the depths of an immense chasm, and though this was not 
more than half way up the mountain, we could not find any traces 
of the path above with the most attentive examination. We shall 
soon know, however, where it goes, for to-morrow we are going up 
the pass ourselves. 

Since I began to write this letter, we have been to see the lad- 
ders by which people climb the precipices to get to the farms and 
pasturages on the shelf of the mountain above. We had to walk 
for about two miles along a narrow path a few hundred feet below 
the foot of the precipice. The path was so narrow, and the slope 
of the mountain was so steep, both above and below us, that it 
made us almost dizzy to walk in it. We could look down on one 
side, a thousand feet or more, to the bottom of the valley, and so 
steep was the descent that, where the ground was bare, a stone 
would have rolled, or a pike-staff have slid, from the top to the 
bottom. In such places we leaned over toward the side of the 
mountain as far as we could in walking along, and were in contin- 
ual fear of falling. 

At some places there was a forest, and here we felt much safer; 
for, though the land was just as steep both above and below us, 
we imagined that the trees would stop us from rolling down the 
mountain side if we were to chance to fall. 

Besides this, the trees on the slope above seemed to afford us a 
protection from the rocks and stones that might otherwise fall 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



141 



Walking along under the crags. Danger from falling rocks. 

upon our heads from the cliffs above ; for the steep slope which 
arose above us on one side of the path ended at the foot of a range 
of stupendous crags, that towered to a vast height in the air, and 
in some places projected so far forward as actually to hang over 
our path. These crags were, in many places, firm and solid, and 
showed no tendency to crumble and fall down. In other places 
the rocks were all cracked and broken, and the whole mountain 
side was strewn with blocks and fragments of all sizes that had 
already come down. Some of the fallen masses were as big as 
small houses. The path, of course, lay across these beds of fallen 
fragments. Here there could be no forest, for the whole mount- 
ain side, from the foot of the cliffs down into the valley as far as 
we could see, was composed of fallen blocks of stone. Of course, 
there was nothing between us and the cliffs above. These hung 
impending a thousand feet above our heads, and as the strata 
were all cracked and fissured, and we could see immense blocks 
hanging on the brink, apparently just ready to fall, we naturally 
were afraid that they might fall while we were in the path beneath 
them, and so hurried on as fast as we could, to escape the danger. 

Then, as soon as we had got once more to smooth and solid 
ground, we would stop and look up at the overhanging masses 
again, and now we wished that they would fall. To see a rock as 
large as a house roll a mile down a steep mountain side we thought 
would be a very grand spectacle. But, though the cliff seemed 
cracked and fissured in every direction, and to hold vast masses 
suspended as if by a thread, nothing would come down. 

We went on along the path, till at last the way became so nar- 



142 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



We turn up toward the ladders. Approach to the foot of them. 

row, and the slope so steep, that we scarcely dared to go any far- 
ther. Still, we were so anxious to see the ladders, that we re- 
solved to proceed. We met small parties from time to time com- 
ing and going. Some seemed frightened ; others looked, or pre- 
tended to look, entirely at their ease. 

At last we came to the point where we were to turn up toward 
the base of the cliffs into a sort of chasm, in which the foot of the 
lowermost ladder was placed. The ascent was very steep, and it 
was made by short zigzags. The ladders were far above. Even 
the lowest end of the lowermost of them was so far up above our 
heads that it made us dizzy to look up to it. Still we went on. 
At last we came to the rocks. There was a fissure at the foot of 
them up which it was necessary to scramble by means of ragged 
projections, in order to get at the foot of the first ladder. 

We stood at the bottom of this fissure and looked up. We could 
see the range of ladders ascending, one after another, up the cliffs, 
until they were lost to view at a vast height above. Some young 
men were to be seen midway coming down. 

The ladders were in different positions, and some of them were 
at a little distance from the others, so that, in several cases, after 
reaching the top of one, there was a short, and steep, and rocky 
ascent to be made before coming to the foot of the next. It made 
one dizzy to look up to them ; indeed, it seemed amazing that 
human beings should dare to go up or come down by them. And 
yet even the women and children of the villages above go up and 
come down without fear. 



THE BATHS OP LEUK. 



143 



Curious custom of bathing. Bathers all together. Amusements. 

There is something very curious in the manner in which the 
people who come to Leuk for the sake of the waters take the 
Ibaths. They have to remain in the water four or five hours, at 
least, every day, and from that to eight ; and as it would be very 
tiresome to remain alone so long in a bathing-tub, the custom has 
arisen of having large tanks, with several compartments, each of 
which is sufficiently spacious to contain a number of people, and 
here they all bathe together, men, women, and children, in the 
same tank. They are all dressed in bathing-dresses made of 
woolen cloth ; they have seats round the sides of the tanks where 
they can sit down, and little floating tables on which they can 
have checker-boards, and chess-boards, and dominoes, and various 
other things to amuse them. They also can have breakfast if 
they choose, or any kind of refreshments, while they are in the 
water. 

Of course, when you go into one of these bathing-houses, you 
behold a very singular spectacle. You walk down a sort of aisle 
in the centre, and on each side are square tanks or ponds, the sur- 
face of the water in them being almost level with the floor. In 
each one of these you see a multitude of heads just rising above 
the water. There are heads of men, of women, of boys, and of 
girls. Some of the people are sitting on a seat, submerged to the 
chin ; others are wading about ; some are talking, some are eat- 
ing their breakfast, some playing checkers or dominoes. They 
have a way, too, of squirting water at each other with their hands. 
They place the fingers of one hand across the palm of the other, so 
as to form a cavity between them, and then squirt the water up 



144 



THE BATHS OF LEUK. 



Picture of the bathers amusing themselves in the water. 




THE BATHERS AT LEUK. 



through an opening they leave at the ends of the fingers. They 
could throw a jet of water in this way four or five feet, as you see 
represented in the engraving. 

Visitors go in very often to see the bathers, and to talk with 
them while they are in the water. They like very much to have 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



145 



Way of going out of the baths. The Gemmi. Setting out in the morning. 

company. There is a railing round the tanks to prevent the vis- 
itors from falling in. 

When the bathers wish to withdraw from the bath, they wade 
out into little closets that open in the side of the tanks, and there, 
when they have shut the door, which, of course, swings in the wa- 
ter, they go up by steps into a little dressing-room, where they 
change their clothes. 

There are a number of these bathing-houses in the village that 
the people go to from the different hotels. 

To-morrow, at half past five o'clock, we are to set out to go over 
the pass of Gemmi. In my next letter I shall give you some ac- 
count of the adventures we meet with. 



LETTER X. 

THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 

Interlachen, Sept. 1. 
The morning when we set out on our passage across the Gem- 
mi was bright and beautiful. We left the hotel before sunrise. 
The distance across the valley, from the village to the foot of the 
mountains, is about a mile, though it looks much less. We reach- 
ed the foot of the ascent just as the sun was gilding the summits 
of the snowy peaks on the other side of the Valley of the Rhone. 
Some distance before we reached the foot of the mountains we be- 
gan to ascend. The road led up a slope of pasture-land by zig- 
zags along the verge of a grove of firs. 

20 K 



146 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



Mules and guides. Beginning of the road. The zigzags. 

We had two mules and two guides. One mule was for the 
baggage, the other for my companion. I chose to walk. 

Indeed, the only way by which one can really see a difficult 
mountain-pass in Switzerland is to walk up ; for, if you are on a 
mule, your attention is so much occupied by his steps that you 
have very little opportunity to look about you ; and I may add, 
that the mule generally carries you so near to the brink of such 
awful precipices that you have very little disposition to look about 
you. Your whole attention is occupied in watching to see where 
he is going. 

Thus we went on toward the base of the mountains. The prec- 
ipices rose before us like a wall. One would have said it was im- 
possible that there could be any road to surmount them. 

We, however, knew where the road was, for we had studied it 
attentively from different points of view on the other side of the 
valley the day before. First it ascended, by zigzags, a steep slope 
of debris which lay against the side of the mountain. This de- 
bris, as it appeared to us through our glasses at a distance, looked 
like a vast heap of ashes that had been shot down by ten thou- 
sand carts from the mountains above. When we came to it, how- 
ever, we found that it consisted of gray rocks and stones, of all 
sizes, that had fallen down, and now lay below in a fan-shaped 
slope, coming to a point at the top against the side of the mountain. 

At the top of this debris the road turned off, and went along 
the top of the precipice for some distance in the face of the cliffs. 
This portion of the road is that shown in the lower part of the tel- 
escopic view in the preceding chapter. 



THE PASS OP THE GEMMI. 



147 



The mules always go on the brink of the precipice. 

At the end of this precipice the road turned again, and began to 
go up a very steep ascent, by sharp and short zigzags, which kept 
the mules constantly turning to and fro. Every one of the turns, 
too, led them to the very verge of the precipice, which, of course, 
grew higher and higher as we advanced. The path itself was very 
good and pretty wide ; but the width of the path, in such cases, 
makes little difference, for, no matter how wide it is, the mule al- 
ways walks on the brink of it. He generally has some baggage 
on his back, and, not knowing how far it extends on each side, he 
reasons that if it should by any chance strike the rock on the in- 
ner side of the wall, it would jostle him over the brink on the oth- 
er side, and that therefore he had better keep as far out as possi- 
ble. 

For myself, I did not reason in any such way, I assure you, 
but kept as near in toward the inner side of the path, and as far 
away from the brink of the precipice as I could ; but I could see 
the mule before me, with the lady on his back, walking along com- 
posedly on the very brink, in places where it was a thousand feet 
down. Indeed, at the turns he went out so far, and turned at the 
corners so deliberately, and looked back at me out of one eye when 
he came round with such a knowing look, that it seemed to me 
he took a pride in showing me how far out over the brink of a 
precipice, with a lady on his back, he dared go. 

There is no real danger in these cases, for the mules never 
fall over. Indeed, if a person were to attempt to force his mule 
over these precipices, he could not do it. The only way, there- 
fore, when you are ascending one of these mountain passes on a 



148 



THE PASS OF THE GrEMMI. 



Railings. Long gallery cut in the rock. 

mule, is to resign yourself to your fate, and when the apparent 
danger becomes so great as to be painful, just to shut your eyes. 
There are places in this path where, we were told, it was custom- 
ary, in bringing ladies down in a chair, to blindfold them, in order 
that they might not see where they were going. 

The turns of the path were, of course, usually on the brink of 
the precipice, and in such cases there was often a wooden railing, 
as if to prevent the mules from going over by the momentum they 
acquired when coming down. Of course, when going up there 
would be far less danger. These railings, however, looked so frail 
and slight that they seemed to afford no protection. Besides, 
many of them were broken down, and others had so gone to de- 
cay that they leaned over the abyss and seemed just ready to 
fall. 

By such ways as these we went on higher and higher. The 
path changed its direction and its character every moment, so as 
to present continually new excitements and to awaken new emo- 
tions of wonder. There was one place where it passed through a 
long gallery which had been cut for it in the solid rock, the mass 
of the ledge overhanging it like a roof. This gallery is shown 
distinctly in the engraving, in the upper part of the view repre- 
sented. In another place it passed to and fro in very short zig- 
zags across the bottom of a sort of chasm, shut in with walls of 
rock on both sides. Sometimes, in looking forward, you would 
see it advancing directly toward the face of a precipice which you 
would see rising perpendicularly like a wall before you. You look 
first forward, and then on the right hand, and then on the left, and 



THE PASS OF THE GrEMMI. 



Numerous zigzags. We at last reach the top of the pass. 

can not see any opening whatever where the path can possibly go. 
In a moment, to your utter amazement, you see the mule before 
you take a short turn, and go right up, almost directly over your 
head. 

There was one series of short sharp zigzags where the slope was 
so steep that the whole width of the path at each turn was gained 
by a wall built up from below. The structure looked like a gi- 
gantic ladder, with the rounds placed in zigzags from one side to 
the other. 

We were a full hour in ascending such places as these — as steep 
all the way as a mule could walk. At length we reached the 
summit. From time to time, as we were ascending, we looked 
down over the brink of the different turns in the path below us, 
and saw other parties of travelers coming up, some on foot and 
some on mules. Among the rest, I saw a party of mules and 
horses coming with guides, but without any riders. They had 
been over the Gemmi with some travelers, and were now returning. 

When we reached the top we found ourselves in the wildest and 
most desolate country that could be imagined. There was a long 
valley extending some miles before us, with a lake in the middle 
of it, and bare rocks and mountains on both sides, but not a bush 
or a tree to be seen. There was a little green discernible here and 
there in the interstices of the rocks, that was produced by grass 
and scanty herbage, but beyond this there was no sign of vegeta- 
tion — nothing but gray rocks and large patches of snow. 

The mules and horses that had no riders reached the top soon 
after we did, and the guide of one of them asked me if, now that 



150 



THE PASS OF THE G-EMMI. 



Horse hired by the way. We stop to take a second breakfast. 

I was at the summit of the pass, I should not like to ride. I said 
that I should. So I hired one of the horses and rode on. 

The region was so rough and rocky that there was no way to 
make a path except by building up two walls, one on each side, 
and filling the space between with smaller stones, and then smooth- 
ing it with a little gravel strewed upon the top. This made a 
kind of ridge, and we rode along upon the top of it. Great gray 
pinnacles of rock were towering all around us, but not a living 
thing was to be seen. 

After traveling on in this manner for an hour or two, we saw be- 
fore us, where the road passed along the side of a hill of bare rocks 
and gravel, a hotel, or rather an inn. It was a solitary building, 
standing entirely by itself, close to the path, and in the midst of a 
scene of the most complete and terrible desolation. 

Here we stopped and had a second breakfast. We had taken 
one breakfast before we left the hotel at Leuk, but, after so much 
hard climbing, we were ready for another. Besides, the guides 
said they wished to stop here a short time, just to give the mules 
a little bread. 

Breakfast over, we mounted again and rode on. After going on 
for some time, we came to the brink of a deep valley, which was to 
lead us down again to the inhabited country. When we first be- 
gan to descend, we came to some solitary pasturages that cows are 
driven up to in summer. We saw flocks of goats, too, in these 
places, creeping along on the mountain sides far above us, in places 
where it seemed impossible for any thing living to go. 

By-and-by the road leading down toward the valley began to be 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



151 



Coming down on the other side. Holding back the mule. 

very steep and very rocky, and it twisted and turned about among 
the cliffs and precipices in the most extraordinary manner. I 
chose to walk down, so I dismounted and gave up my horse to the 
guide. The guide turned the horse loose in the rear of the party, 
to follow of his own accord, and thus we commenced the descent 
of the steep part of the way. 

The path grew worse. It became extremely crooked, extremely 
rocky, and extremely steep. The rocks formed a sort of stairway 
in some places, down which the mule staggered, stumbled, and 
slipped in quite a frightful manner ; indeed, it seemed quite diffi- 
cult for him to keep his footing. 

" Hold him back ! hold him back !" said the guide. He spoke 
in German, and addressed himself, not to me, but to the other 
guide. 

So the other guide advanced, and seized the mule by the tail, 
and held him back with all his strength, while the first held him 
by the head. I scrambled along the edge of the path as well as I 
could, and endeavored to prevent the lady from falling. Thus we 
came down the worst of the descents very inconveniently and awk- 
wardly, no doubt, but still very safely. 

Sometimes, when the descent was very steep and unusually 
rough and rocky, the horse that was coming on behind would stop 
and look over the brink above down to the rest of the party mov- 
ing along in the turn of the path below, and would pause, appear- 
ing to be in doubt whether it would be best for him to go any far- 
ther. In such cases, his master would turn back and shout out 
something to him in German, and throw sticks and small stones 



THE PASS OF THE GEMM1. 



153 



View of the valley. Beautiful appearance of it. The four kids. 

at him, and thus assist him in coming to the conclusion that it 
would be best to go on. Generally, however, in the most steep 
and difficult places, he walked meekly after us, "just like a sheep," 
as the guide said, " following the shepherd." 

We could now, from all the turns in our path, look down into 
the valley into which we were descending. It lay far, very far 
below us, smiling with verdure and beauty. We could see the 
smooth and level road winding along through green fields by the 
side of a river, and scattered houses, and gardens, and orchards, 
and here and there the spire of a village church rising among the 
trees. 

We had, however, a great way yet to go down before we were to 
reach this smooth and beautiful scene. The path went winding 
on to and fro, sometimes through a forest, sometimes along the 
brink of a torrent, and sometimes on the face of a steep rocky 
hill. The whole valley was, however, in view almost all the 
time. Its luxuriant verdure and its surpassing beauty were ren- 
dered doubly striking by the dark and stupendous ranges of 
mountains which surrounded it on every side, and seemed closely 
to shut it in. 

We passed, at first, some pasturages and chalets, where we saw 
children tending flocks of goats. At one place there were four lit- 
tle kids feeding on some rocks that overhung the path. I stop- 
ped to speak to them, and though I spoke to them in English, 
while I don't suppose they understood any thing but German, 
they all immediately came scrambling down the rocks to see me, 
and they followed me afterward a long way down the mountain. 



154 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



We at length reach the valley. Logs in the water. The calash. 

Sometimes I would toll them along by the side of the path to the 
most precipitous places I could find, in order to see how easily 
they would come down the rocks, where it was so steep that you 
would think no living thing could stand. They always came 
down without any difficulty and without any fear, their little hoofs 
planting themselves on the smallest projections of the rocks, and 
obtaining there the surest footing. 

We had to go down a much greater distance than we had come 
up, for the Valley of Kandersteg, into which we were descending, 
was several thousand feet lower than that of Leuk, where we had 
commenced our ascent on the other side. At length, however, we 
reached the bottom. 

"Now," said the guide, as we came to the foot of the last de- 
scent, and turned into a smooth path at the margin of a little 
wood, "now we are on the plain." 

The road here became smooth and wide, but yet we had a mile 
or two to walk before we reached the inn. The path lay along a 
very rapid stream, where we saw a great many short logs dancing 
in the current toward the mills below. These logs had been cut 
in the mountains, and had been brought down by the streams. 
The ends of them were all bruised and battered where they had 
been knocked against the stones. 

At last we reached the inn, and here we dismissed our mules 
and guides, and took a carriage. The carriage was a very pretty 
little open calash, as they call it, with a back seat for two, and a 
place in front, on the edge of the boot, for the driver. We took 
our places, and prepared for a delightful drive down the valley. 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



Excellent road and pleasant ride. 



The Lake of Thun. 



Interlachen. 



We found the ride even more delightful than we had anticipa- 
ted. The country all around us was inexpressibly beautiful. 
There was the greatest variety of pretty road-side scenes, con- 
nected with Swiss life and manners, that incessantly occupied our 
attention and amused our minds. 

The road was as hard and smooth, and almost as level as a 
floor, and the little carriage rolled over it with an easy motion, that 
was extremely agreeable to us after the fatigues of the morning on 
the mountains. We passed continually the prettiest Swiss cot- 
tages, with the children at the windows or on the little sheltered 
piazzas ; and little gardens and orchards, with peasant-girls in 
them gathering the fruit ; and fields, with laborers reaping or bind- 
ing sheaves ; and parties of tourists, some riding at their ease in 
elegant traveling carriages, and some walking, with pike-staves in 
their hands and knapsacks on their backs. And then, although 
the valley itself was so smooth and beautiful, we had all around 
us an endless variety of mountains of the most picturesque and 
striking forms, and of stupendous magnitude. Dark forests and 
foaming cascades adorned their sides, while vast fields of glittering 
snow and immense impending glaciers crowned their summits. 

At last, winding around among these mountains, we came in 
view of a great lake. It was the Lake of Thun.* Its beautiful 
blue waters lay embosomed in the midst of a charming sea of ver- 
dure and fertility. We turned soon, and took a road which led 
along its banks toward Interlachen. 

Interlachen is a town of large hotels and boarding-houses, f It 
* Pronounced Toon. t See Frontispiece. 



156 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



Scenes presented to view on entering the town. 

is situated in a beautiful spot among the lakes and mountains, in 
the very heart of Switzerland. The hotels and boarding-houses 
are built for the accommodation of people who wish to reside in 
Switzerland for some weeks at a time in the summer season, so 
that the place has, in some respects, much the air of Newport or 
Saratoga in America. It was here that our journey for the day 
was to end. 

We accordingly turned, when we reached the lake, into a road 
which led along the shore toward the upper end of it. The road 
was very smooth and level. It lay close to the water, and mean- 
dered very beautifully, following all the turns and windings of the 
shore. On the one side we had the waters of the lake, with boats, 
covered with pretty awnings, going to and fro, and bright-looking 
peasant-girls rowing them. On the other side were fields, gar- 
dens, orchards, groves, cottages, and hamlets, and here and there a 
romantic little inn, with boats drawn up at the landing on the lake 
before the door. 

At length we approached Interlachen. We entered it, and rode 
along the principal street. On one hand was a broad side-walk, 
with ladies and gentlemen from all parts of the world walking to 
and fro. On the other were gardens, with the fronts of the hotels 
seen here and there among the trees. Presently our carriage 
turned in at an open gateway, and drove up a broad graveled 
walk, through beautiful grounds adorned with shrubbery and 
flowers, and stopped at length before the long piazza of the Hotel 
of the Alps. 

Other carriages that had just come or were just going were at 



THE PASS OP THE GEMMI. 



157 



Some account of Interlachen. Excursions. The Jungfrau. 

the door. People were sitting on settees in the shade, some read- 
ing their guide-books, others looking on the snow and glaciers on 
the Jungfrau, and others looking at us. The house was very full, 
but we were soon accommodated with a pleasant room, opening 
out upon the piazzas and gardens. 

Interlachen has, perhaps, more attractions for persons who de- 
sire to spend several weeks quietly in one spot among the Alps 
than any other place in Switzerland. In the first place, though 
it is in the heart of the mountains, and is surrounded on all sides 
by the most stupendous Alpine scenery, it is reached from the 
French frontier by a very easy, safe, and delightful drive. We 
had come to it, it is true, over a mountain pass, but the road to it 
from the north, which is the way by which the great mass of trav- 
elers enter Switzerland, is smooth and easy, and is daily traversed 
by excellent diligences and other public conveyances, and by pri- 
vate carriages of all kinds. The situation of the hotels, too, is 
delightful, and the immense concourse of people that assemble in 
them every summer makes the place extremely animated and gay. 

It is an excellent centre, too, from which to make short mount- 
ain excursions. The whole region of the Oberland Alps lies near, 
and by excursions of one, two, or three days from Interlachen the 
tourist may ascend the loftiest elevations, and visit the wildest 
scenes, and explore some of the most stupendous glaciers that are 
to be seen in Switzerland. The Jungfrau, the twin sister of Mont 
Blanc, is in full view from the windows of all the hotels, and in a 
few hours it may be approached so near as to give the best view 
of the glaciers, and the vast strata of permanent ice and snow, and 



158 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



View of the Jungfrau, Great saloons in the hotel. Supper. 

the falling avalanches, and other scenery characteristic of the high- 
er Alps, that can "be obtained in all Switzerland. 

Nothing can be more exciting and sublime than the first view 
which the visitor obtains of the Jungfrau from the windows of his 
hotel at Interlachen. It is seen through a great gap in a range 
of nearer mountains, which last are green with pasturages and for- 
ests to the top. The contrast of this dark green foreground with 
the silvery brilliancy of the Jungfrau, which is seen in the open- 
ing between them, glittering in the morning sun, produces an im- 
pression which no one who has felt it can ever forget. 

In a short time we came out of our room to go and get some 
supper. We came first to a large area, which occupied the space 
of an angle between the buildings of the hotel, where many per- 
sons were taking tea and coffee in the open air. The space was 
covered above by the chambers of the hotel, but it was open in 
front toward the gardens, and it communicated, on both sides, 
with the piazza. From this we entered a very large saloon, w T here 
a great many ladies and gentlemen, from many different nations, 
were assembled. Some were at the piano, others were at differ- 
ent tables in various parts of the room, playing chess, or back- 
gammon, or other games. Some were sitting on the sofas talk- 
ing ; at one place you would hear French, at another English, at 
another German, at another Italian. Some were moving up and 
down the room, looking for their friends, or just coming in from a 
walk. 

I knew the way very well, for I had often been at this hotel be- 



THE PASS OP THE GEMMI. 



159 



Songs of the mountaineers. Effect of the music. 

fore, so I walked half way down the saloon, and then, turning to 
the left, went through a door there to another large hall, where 
there was a long table set, and a great many places ready for peo- 
ple who wished for supper. We took our seats here among many 
other parties of travelers, and a waiter immediately came to attend 
to us. Our wants were soon very abundantly supplied. 

After supper, as we were going back to our room, we heard the 
sound of music. It came from the open area between the build- 
ings of the hotel that I have already described. We went to the 
place, and found there a company of Tyrolean singers, who were 
singing mountain-songs to entertain the company. They sang 
for some time, and then went away, but their places were imme- 
diately supplied by four girls, dressed in their native costume, 
who came and stood together in a ring facing each other, and sang 
songs for half an hour ; while the company, some seated on set- 
tees in the piazzas, some leaning against the pillars, or standing 
together in little groups near by, and others stationed at the win- 
dows of various parlors and bed-rooms around, listened. The 
songs were mountain-songs altogether, and the sounds reawaken- 
ed in our minds so vividly the impressions that had been made 
upon them by the stupendous scenes of grandeur and beauty 
through which we had passed during the day, that they filled us 
with emotions of delight. At another time, and in a different 
place, perhaps they would not have afforded us so great a pleas- 
ure ; but now it seemed as if the voices and echoes of the mount- 
ains which we had been listening to all the morning, at the vast 
elevations from which we had descended, had followed us down, 



160 



THE PASS OF THE GEMMI. 



The conclusion. 

like the four little kids, into the valley, to cheer and solace our 
evening's repose. 

It is Saturday night. On Monday we shall continue our jour- 
ney; but, though we are in Switzerland, we are leaving the mount- 
ains, and of course our rambles among the Alps, for this summer 
at ]east, are ended. 



THE END. 





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